Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The only available place where she could safely dock was a beach a fair walk from the city. The city was walled, so she didn’t worry about being spotted. How she ended up with such a cowardly group was beyond her. At the very least they gave her cover from the marines for a bit. Not likely that they’d look for her in a crew where the captain didn’t even have a bounty on his head. It was so naïve of them to think that they’d be able to turn her in, and at this point it was to be expected.

As she hid her boat, thoughts of that crew had completely vanished as they were probably already captured. She cared not for people who preyed on the weak for the sake of monetary gain and cheap fame. Instead she was more focused on finding an escape and another way back onto the Grandline.

If memory served her right, the two closet villages would be the Goa Kingdom, and Windmill Village. She was much more likely to be noticed in Goa, so Windmill would be her best hope to find a place to stay the night and get a proper boat and to take off to another island to look for her next possible crew. Hopefully one with actual aspirations to leave the East Blue and take on the Grandline. Maybe there’d even be a pirate crew docked there. It’d be the wisest place to dock for sure.

But first she’d need to get through this dump. It wasn’t very favourable for high heels, but not wanting to risk stepping on a needle or something of the like, they stayed on. She was careful to stay out of the line of sight, as to avoid unnecessary conflict. If she wasn’t recognized as the Devil’s Child, she would have been recognized as a woman, and judging by the kind of people that she saw living there, they would meet their end by her hands and then a scene would be caused. And that was another hassle that she didn’t feel like dealing with.

However, she did manage to overhear something about a pirate torturing a child. Now that simply wouldn’t do. Even if it would cause a scene, she couldn’t just let a child suffer like that. She’d simply take down the assailant and bring the child home. All she needed to do now was find the child.

While she was glad it was, the task was easy. It was clear they knew no one was willing to fight against actual pirates, so they had no need to cover their tracks. They inadvertently lead her straight to their base where the child was being held.

Looked like she made it just in time. She watched from the doorway as a large man trudged towards the bloodied and beaten boy, sword in hand as he continued to threaten the boy. How truly disgusting that scum was. It was painfully clear that she needed to take action.

It was a simple take down. All she needed was three hands, and the man before her was on his knees, head forced back and sword to his neck. Had there not been a child there, she wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him right on the spot. Should she see him again, he shouldn’t expect the same mercy twice. The rest weren’t even worthy to mention how easy they were to take down.

As she walked up to the child, she could hear him mumble “I won’t tell you… I won’t tell you…” It really broke her heart a little to see a child with such dedication in such a state. Just by looking around the room, she could see that spiked knuckles were used. It seemed unnecessary and it just furthered how she wouldn’t hesitate to kill this man should he ever cross her path again. But now wasn’t the time to think of the brutal ways she would snap the man’s neck as if it were a pencil, she could do that late. Right now, her priority was getting this boy home safely.

She had untied the boy and had him in her arms, when the wall came crumbling down as two more boys entered the scene, both armed with steel pipes and rage. It looked like the boy had some equally admirable friends. Though their rage subsided to confusion as they saw her standing there with the young boy securely in her arms. The freckled boy spoke up first.

“Hey. Lady. You’re not with Bluejam, are you?” There was just a bit of anger in the older boy’s voice as he spoke.

“Sh-sh-sh-she sa-a-aved me.” The younger boy in her arms hiccupped, interrupting the other’s line of questioning, tears of joy spilling down his face. That didn’t seem to make the other happy, but she could tell he was relieved. The blond grabbed the other older boy’s head and forced him to bow.

“Thank you for saving him. I’m sorry we weren’t here sooner to help.” He apologized, just by the way he did it, and she could tell that the boy had taken a class or two on manners. It was probably a mostly rehearsed line with blanks used to fit the situation, but his sincerity shined through. She watched as the freckled boy was elbowed in the ribs, and heard his quiet “Ow what the hell” and then a brief silent exchange.

“Yeah, thanks… I guess…” The half-hearted apology still held a little sincerity. It was just a little more hidden than most. She could tell that it was more so awkward, as it wasn’t really something he probably knew well. She knew that most places like this, manners were a rarity. So his weak abilities in showing gratitude came through. Not that she minded. She simply smiled at them.

“You’re welcome. Now why don’t I patch you up before bringing you home?” The pair looked at each other, and then back at her.

“Just give us a second.” The blond said, before getting into as much as a huddle can be with only two people. Naturally she sprouted an ear nearby and out of sight to listen to the conversation for curiosity sake. They talked about the pros and cons, namely about her finding their treasure and her leading Bluejam straight to it but how she was old so she probably knew first aid better than either of them and the fact that she saved Luffy. Luffy must’ve been the boy in her arms.

The huddle broke and they faced her again.

“Alright. But if he doesn’t stop being a crybaby, we’re gonna leave him behind.” The freckled boy threatened. Instantly, Luffy stopped sobbing, much to the surprise of everyone there, even Robin herself.

“Well, it looks like that’s not going to be a problem now.” She joked, as she started to make her way out of the rubble. The two followed her out, the freckled one taking the lead, and the blond following behind.

“You don’t have to carry him either. Maybe if he walks he won’t be so much of a spoiled brat.” The freckled one added.

“I’m not a spoiled brat! I’m strong! I won’t cry when I’m ten!” Luffy protested, squirming in her arms, so she put him down.

“Well I didn’t cry when I was seven. You’re just a baby! Don’t compare yourself to me, idiot.”

“I’m gonna be stronger than everyone! I promised Shanks I’m gonna become a great pirate!” Shanks? Was it possible that it could be the same Shanks that she was thinking of? It could be possible, after all, there were stranger things than friendly pirates.

“You? A pirate?”

“Yeah!”

“As if.”

“Okay. That’s enough. Let’s just find somewhere she can patch Luffy up in peace.” The blond one interjected, moving to put himself between the arguing pair. The two huffed and looked off in opposite directions. She was glad that he had such good friends.

Once they got to a clearing, they stopped and fixed up the wounds that had been sustained. It was mostly Luffy’s pretty major wounds, but she also fixed up the minor cuts that the other two had gotten when they bust through the wall.

“So where am I taking you boys now?” She asked. The freckled one looked at the blond.

“Well you can’t really stay by the treasure anymore, they’re gonna be looking for you. You might as well come and stay with us at the bandits.”

“You sure she won’t mind?”

“She will, but I don’t care.” They shrugged, the freckled one taking the lead.

“Alright, I’ll lead the way. Don’t get lost, because I’m not coming back to find you.” He said as he started walking into the woods once more. The blond one followed behind. As she started walking, she felt a tiny hand take her own. She looked down to see Luffy had taken her hand, and was holding it as if she were an older sibling or something.

“You don’t know the forest well so I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.” He smiled as he kept walking. She smiled back softly at the boy as they continued walking. He really was a sweet boy. But as sweet as she was, she needed to bring him back to his home, then leave. He really didn’t need to be put in any more danger because of her.

It was already dark by the time they got to the hut in the mountains. She hadn’t expected the boys to live so far from town like that.

“You might as well come in too. It’d be a pain in the ass to have to walk back to town in the dark. You probably don’t know the way anyways.” The freckled one offered.

“Yeah! A sleep over!” Luffy beamed brightly, dragging her by the hand closer to the hut. It was surprising as to how strong he was for someone so young.

“Luffy shut up. You’re gonna wake everyone up, idiot.”

“I really shouldn’t. I’m sure your parents wouldn’t be happy with you bringing so many people home without them knowing.” She brought up, hoping that that would be an acceptable solution.

“Hurry up and get inside already. I already told you that I don’t care what Dadan thinks. It’s late and I want to go to bed.” The freckled one said, coming back outside and forcing her into the hut. These were probably the strongest children that she knew. It looked like at least she’d have somewhere to spend the night. It wasn’t as if she really had much of a choice other than try and find her way back, which was unlikely.

A few hours passed, and she was sure the kids were all sound asleep. She had taken a spot near the wall where she sat and feigned sleep as the boys slept under one blanket. Somehow, they had managed to move all the way over to her, Luffy sprawled across the three of them, the other two were pretty stationary, apart from moving to keep the blanket on them.

She had been certain that they were all sound asleep, until the freckled one started speaking in a whisper. “Hey, Luffy. You awake?” There was no answer. “Hey Luffy.” There was still no answer. Then she heard a thump, followed by an “Ow!”

“Luffy, why didn’t you tell them back there. Those guys would kill women and children without a second thought.” The freckled one asked, voice still a whisper.

“If I told them… Then I could never be your friend.” Luffy answered in a small voice.

“That’d be better than dying, right? Why do you want to be my friend so much anyways?”

“Because…” She could feel his grip tightening around the blanket, resisting the urge to comfort the boy as not to ruin the moment.

“After all that stuff I put you through, why did you still follow me out there?”

“Because… there isn’t anybody else. I can’t go back to Windmill Village and I hate mountain bandits. If I didn’t chase after you, I’d be all alone. Being alone is much worse than getting hurt.”

“What about your parents?”

“Just Grandpa, no one else.”

“It isn’t so bad when I’m here.”

“Yeah.”

“But it would be if I wasn’t.”

“Yeah.”

Then the room went silent for a while. It was probably a full minute. The air was tense, what kind of lives had these boys lived up to this point? She really shouldn’t be there, she didn’t want them to get mixed up with the marines. They didn’t deserve anymore suffering like that.

Finally the silence was broken. “So you think I should live?” That was a heavy question for a kid that young to be asking. It was a pain she knew, but no one deserved it that young.

“Of course.” Luffy answered, his voice picking up so his whisper was gone and he was using his normal speaking voice.

“I see… Now go to bed, it’s late.” He said, rolling onto his side so he was facing away from him.

“Okay, night Ace.” Luffy said, and moments later he was sound asleep.

As if he were waiting for that moment, he responded with “Night Luffy.” She waited a bit until she was sure that Ace was asleep. Then once she knew he was asleep, she sprouted an arm next to him to properly tuck him in. She smoothed his hair before the hand vanished. She made sure that the three of them were under the blanket before she herself could fall asleep

Chapter Text

Come morning, she heard a commotion downstairs. It was no doubt the boys’ caretakers. There was one voice that stood out among the rest, and she didn’t sound happy in the least. She couldn’t blame her. It was probably best for her to have found her way back a village. There was no doubt going to be hell if they caught her here. Seeing a wanted woman with the children you were taking care of was never a good thing. She’d have think of a way to sneak out.

Though actually doing that was easier said than done, as the children seemed to have moved from the floor, from onto her lap. While it was kinda cute, it was inconvenient as this made it impossible for her to move from her spot. She could hear the angry stomps and the even angrier yelling about her “damn brats” It didn’t seem like this was going to end well.

She stomped into the room, only to find them asleep. She started counting them, she could hear her mumbling their names, hesitating as she pointed to the blond one. Then she’d count again, and again, and again.

“Ace! Luffy! Who is that?!” She barked. The kids stirred a bit, sitting up so answer her before falling back asleep.

“Who’s who?”

“What’s the big deal, do you have any idea how late it is?”

“How come there’s one more brat?! Who are you?!” She barked, she had no idea how she had yet to be noticed, but she could see that a few of the men behind her had at least noticed her. The blond boy got up, rubbing his eyes as he got up.

“Huh? You talking about me? I’m Sabo. And you must be Dadan.”

“Sabo? I’ve heard of you!”

“Oh yeah? That makes it a lot easier! Thank you for taking care of me!” Robin couldn’t help but smile a little. At least he was polite about imposing himself on her like this. He took her hand to shake it, only to have her bat it away.

“Taking care of you? Don’t tell me you’re going to stay here? You’ve gotta be kidding me! I heard that you’re a worthless brat!”

“Well I hear you’re a worthless old hag!”

“I don’t want to look after another brat!”

“But I’ve heard that you’re a good worthless old hag you won’t refuse a request. I hear you’re a truly manly old hag!”

“Truly manly? I’ll have you know that I’m all woman.” Then an exchange of giggles and growls went on between the two of them. Ace and Luffy had woken up by now, and had already put away the blanket that they used the night before and were watching the comical bargain take place. Dadan sighed.

“Ace, Luffy, Sabo! I’m giving you a place to stay! You gotta get to work already!” She ordered.

“Thank you, Dadan!” He beamed. All seemed to have worked out, until Luffy finally accidentally brought to attention what the men behind Dadan were thinking.

“Hey lady! You’re gonna stay for breakfast right?!” He asked, now that his mind was off the argument and on more important things like food.

“I really should be going. I wouldn’t mean to impose.” She smiled at the boy. She could hear Dadan sputter as she had finally noticed her.

“AND WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY BRATS?!” Dadan demanded, probably not realizing just how protective she got over the children that she was just letting live at her hut. She chuckled a little.

“They insisted I stay the night, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” She calmly responded.

“Yeah! She saved my life! She’s really cool! She can do a hand thing and she’s really strong!” Luffy explained, standing between the two women as if to defuse the situation.

“That still doesn’t answer my question on who the hell are you?” Dadan said firmly, crossing her arms.

“Isn’t it polite to give your name before asking someone else’s?” She playfully teased.

“Isn’t it polite not to break into someone’s house in the middle of the night?”

“So you gonna stay or not lady?” Luffy asked, forcing his way into the conversation once more, not wanting to be ignored. She chuckled.

“I already caused enough trouble, I really should be going.” She did make sure that the boys were safe, and while they were here, they were safe. Her answer didn’t seem to sit well with Luffy.

“No, you should stay for breakfast.” He whined, briefly before getting glared at by Ace for whining. His whine went to a scowl and then promptly stuck his tongue out at the older boy.

“Stop messing around and tell me your name already!” Dadan butted in, taking back the conversation from the boy. She figured, if they knew, then they’d demand that she left.

“Nico Robin, I’m an archaeologist.” The room went silent. The only one who didn’t seem to know who she was, was Luffy, who seemed more preoccupied trying to say the word archaeologist than freak out about her identity.

“Great! I thought my home needed another monster! Are you going to bring home Whitebeard with you next time?!” She scolded the boys, before groaning and sliding a hand down her face. “You might as well stay for breakfast. It’s not as if that one’s going to let you leave yet anyways.”

“Nope! I’m not!” Luffy beamed proudly. She had really hoped that she could have left peacefully, but it seems as though she would have to stay longer. She’d have to repay them in some way. They were offering her a free meal. It was the least she could do.

“Alright then. You brats have the choice of either doing some chores done before you eat, or catching breakfast. Your choice.” Dadan stated firmly. The boys seemed to have already decided before she asked. They had already grabbed their pipes and were pushing their way through the crowd of bandits that still stood at the door.

“Bye Robin! We’ll bring back something extra tasty!” Luffy grinned, last to make his way through the mass. She couldn’t help but chuckle a little at the display.

“Well? What are you lot standing around for?! Get to work!” Dadan barked, the bandits behind her jumped and instantly disbursed. Robin chuckled a little watching how the all scurried around looking for something to do.

“Don’t think that I’m going to thank you just because you helped out one of the brats.” Dadan said, averting her gaze as she tried to hide her poker face.

“I didn’t expect you to. Luffy simply needed help, and I was the one that was there. Nothing more than that.”

“You know that it’s not going to be that easy losing that brat, you know. He spent the last three months chasing after Ace who was actively trying to kill him. And if I find out you’re trying the same tactic, I’ll come after you too.” There was a brief pause. “N-not because I care about him. I just don’t want to deal with his grandfather’s wrath.” Robin chuckled.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of it. He’s a nice little boy.”

“Good. Because I swear the next time that brat gets caught under a boulder, I’m not saving him.” She huffed, walking out of the room. She could only wonder how many times that the boy could have gotten stuck to warrant that kind of response. “If you’re going to stay here for a bit, you might as well make yourself useful.”

She had simply taken a moment to make herself look more presentable, choosing to pull her hair back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way for now. She walked out of the room, looking around, she took her shoes from the front door and put them on before she went out to see what the bandits out there were doing.

She had always found that laundry was easier with more hands. She crossed her arms over her chest, causing the men around the bucket to freak out as arms sprouted from the ground next to them and start doing the chore for them. They watched on in awe as the arms scrubbed down the clothes and then put them up on the line. Robin sat back, enjoying the shocked expressions with amusement. It was a lot of laundry, but she had a lot of arms, so the task was made a lot easier. The men simply ended up sitting there and watching as she did all the work for them. It wasn’t that she minded, she did owe them after all.

However, while she was doing work, with her devil fruit at work made her look like a slacker instead. She really couldn’t blame Dadan when she gave her a disapproving glare.

“What are you doing slacking off?! Shouldn’t you be doing something?!” Dadan barked, as if she were already one of her own.

“I am.” She smiled, pointing over to the hands hard at work. Dadan looked at them flabbergasted. She couldn’t quite tell whether to look at them, or her. She finally settled with clearing her throat and looking off to the side.

“Well then… Good job, I suppose.” She grumbled awkwardly before going off to bark orders at some other bandits. They were quite a lively bunch. She had to admit she was enjoying spending time with them. It was just a shame that she’d have to leave soon. Her being there was just going to bring about terrible things for this lovely family.

It didn’t take long before the three boys came back, wide grins on their faces as they brought home a crocodile of all things. What an odd thing to do. She knew that they weren’t ordinary boys, but this was really surprising.

“Hey! One of you cook this up! I’m starving!” Ace ordered. She enjoyed watching a few of the bandits scramble to take the beast and haul it off to the kitchen. With the crocodile now out of their hands, Luffy made a b-line straight for her, his eyes shining with excitement to tell her the story on how they beat this crocodile.

“Robin! Robin! You shoulda seen it! Ace and Sabo bashed its head in and I only got eaten once! It was so cool! I wacked it a few times from the inside of its mouth so I helped too!” He smiled, proud of his accomplishment. She ruffled his hair, and sprouted a few more to ruffle the other two as well. They groaned and tried to swat away the hands as she had embarrassed the poor boys with her praise.

“Well the three of you did a good job.” Luffy immediately whipped around.

“See! See! I told you I helped!”

“She wasn’t there, so how could she know.” Ace countered, this only caused the two boys to literally butt heads and growl at each other. Just by how the two interacted, she found it almost hard to believe that Ace was trying to kill Luffy not even a full day ago. My how people can change. She could tell that if Luffy ever took to the sea, he’d certainly be a force to be reckoned with.

“Well why don’t you boys go wash up before breakfast?”

“You’re not my mom.”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna!” Arms sprouted and pushed the trio towards the bathroom. They didn’t move. In the end, she had to push the three all the way there before the finally listened and did it. They grumbled, but they did it.

Chapter Text

It seemed that she had misjudged just how entertaining this family was. They seemed to be full of surprises. Especially as she watches them eat breakfast. It seemed that just by watching them dig into the ample meat on the platter. She had been lucky to have been fast enough to have grabbed enough for herself. She didn’t need a lot, so it wasn’t that hard to get enough for herself.

All sense of order had left as soon as soon as the meat came into view. All order that had once been there, had completely vanished and ushered in what could only be described as true chaos. She watched as it turned from one woman being in charge, and then all of a sudden it became a free for all. She sat off to the side to watch it all unfold.

She had a hard time deciding which part of this whole event was her favourite. There was simply so much going on, and to decide on one part to focus on was simply too hard even for her. Her attentions kept going between the pair that were working so well on laundry together prior to her helping, to the man intimidated by Ace, to Luffy turning into possibly the most adorable vicious beast she had ever seen, and finally Sabo completely undisturbed right up at the plate. Though she had to give honorable mention to Dadan sitting off to the side getting pelted with stray meat as she vacantly staring off into the distance.

She’d really love to stay here for a while. Even if she had spent so little time with them, she had fallen in love with the quirky nature of their family. But they knew who she was, odds were that it’d end up the same as every other time. This would only make it so much harder, they were one of the more charming families.

Now that she thought about it, they were one of the few families that simply continued on with their lives even after they knew who she was. She couldn’t help but wonder why, but that was going to be something that she would have to have to think about on the ride to the next crew.

The meal had ended, and she could only assume was the customary patching of the wounded had just begun. They weren’t major wounds. It wasn’t like anyone had lost a finger. At least not this time. That certainly would have made a mess had that have happened.

Though surprisingly enough, all three of the boys remained unharmed. Perhaps they truly were the ones that ruled the house despite Sabo only truly being a member as of couple of hours ago. Somehow it was as if he were meant to live there this entire time. He did make an excellent addition to the family. And it seemed as if the trio were truly the ones running this show the whole time. It was both amusing and adorable. She really did hope that she could see where these boys were in a few years, because they would most certainly have very interesting deaths.

“Well, I should get going now. I’ve really overstayed my welcome.” She said, getting up from her spot. This immediately attracted the attention of Luffy, who was to say the least, not happy with that announcement.

“You can’t go yet! You still gotta…gotta….” She could see his tiny brain working at a million miles an hour, trying to come up with another reason.

“I really can’t stay, Luffy. I’m a very dangerous person, and being with me would only put you in danger.”

“You can’t be more dangerous than Grandpa. Besides, I do plenty of dangerous things anyways so it doesn’t matter if you’re dangerous too!” She crouched down to Luffy’s level, placing her hands on his shoulders.

“Luffy, I have too many enemies. You’re too young to fight them off, and besides, you can’t fight off the entire World Government by yourself.”

“Well you saved my life, so you should stay here and then you can have Grandpa’s protection just like the bandits do. The bandits steal and beat people up all the time. I don’t know what an arc-whatever does, but it can’t be worse than mountain bandits. Mountain bandits are the worst.”

“Luffy. I’m doing this for you. Even me being alive right now is a crime to the World Government. Just let me go so you can live peacefully here.” She got up and started walking off. She sprouted arms at Luffy’s feet to hold onto her legs to keep him in place.

“Hey! Lemme go!” He squirmed and flailed. It was for the best. Now he could live a normal life and-

What just grabbed her? She whipped around, looked down, and saw a pair of tiny hand latched onto her ankles. So this whole time he was a devil fruit user too? How odd.

“JOIN MY CREW! WE’RE NOT SETTING SAIL YET AND I’M THE ONLY OTHER MEMBER, BUT JOIN MY CREW!” He yelled. She simply bent down and pinched both his hands, causing them to lose grip. He went flying back, loudly crashing into the bandits who weren’t smart enough not to stand behind him. She turned back around and kept walking.

A horrible moment of realization struck when she realized that she hadn’t gotten rid of the hands holding onto his legs. But it was too little too late. By the time she had gotten rid of them, his arms had already wrapped around her entire midsection, his bottom half pushing them forward and down a steep hill.

It didn’t take long for them to recover, Luffy bounced back near instantly. She had to wonder if it was part of his devil fruit power.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT THE WORLD GOVERNMENT SAYS BECAUSE I’M GONNA BE THE KING OF THE PIRATES! AND YOU’RE MY FRIEND SO YOU SHOULD JOIN MY CREW! AND I CAN’T LET GO OF YOU BECAUSE MY ARMS GOT TWISTED IN A KNOT!” It started off as a sentimental moment, but looking down, his arms were tangled together. And around her arms no less. She couldn’t even move or bloom more hands to help. They were simply trapped, and the force of the blow had landed them nowhere near where the bandit hut was. It was a hard enough time getting up from the ground, and its seemed they fell faster than she had previously thought.

“I’m just going to take you back up to your family, and then I have to go. Okay?” Robin said with a sigh.

“No! Shanks and Benn and Roo and Yasopp and the rest of the Red Hair pirates all left and I can’t see Makino or the Mayor anymore, so you and Sabo and Ace are my only friends I have left. I don’t want to lose any more friends because then Ace’ll want to leave and then so will Sabo and then I’ll be all by myself again.” He said, his voice getting quiet again.

“So you know the Red Hair, Shanks?” She asked, intrigued as she tried to find a way back up to where they were.

“Yeah! He was the one who gave me my hat! It’s my treasure! I’m gonna give it back to him when I’m the greatest pirate ever! That’s why you gotta join my crew! You’re really strong and you saved my life yesterday so you gotta be a good person!” She could feel his smile on her back. To think that he’d just blindly believe that she was a good person like that. It made her worry a little about him. He seemed a bit too trusting, and people were going to take advantage of that.

“You do know that I already have a bounty, and I’ve been wanted since I was around your age, right?” She asked.

“That just means that you’re really cool! And when I become a pirate, I’ll have like a bajillion beri bounty because my punches are as strong as pistols! I can’t show you right now cause I’m all tied up but when we get untied I’ll show you how good my punches are! You’ll be really impressed. Like really really!” She couldn’t help but chuckle a little at his optimize. “Oh! And we get back up, we gotta as Ace and Sabo to join our crew! It’ll be the strongest crew out there! We’ll make it to the One Piece in no time! Oh! And we gotta find a musician. You gotta have a musician.” It seems like meeting Shanks has lead the boy to fall in love with the pirate life. She couldn’t help but wonder what he would have been like without that encounter.

“You know I haven’t agreed to join you yet.”

“It’s okay because I decided. You gotta join my crew or else it won’t be as cool. And you were taking so long so I decided for you.”

“And what will you do if I refuse.”

“You’re not allowed. You’re part of my crew now.” She chuckled. He really was so innocent to the way the world works.

“You know I’ve betrayed countless crews before you offered, right?”

“You’re not allowed to because you’re not allowed to leave the crew until I say. Captain’s orders.”

Suddenly a deep booming voice came from behind them, causing Luffy to tense up in fear.

“What’s this I hear about becoming a pirate?!”

Chapter Text

This was bad.

No this was way worse than bad. This was like super-duper ultra-mega bad. Like worse than that time that he got his arm caught in some fallen rocks and was stuck there until he woke up unstuck. And even then, that was still so much better than what was about to befall them.

He was really lucky that his feet were nowhere near the ground, because he wouldn’t have been able to run. But Robin might be able to. She doesn’t have little legs like him so maybe she could out run him. Maybe they had a chance. He leaned in real close to Robin’s ear.

“Robin, we gotta run. Grandpa’s really angry and he’s gonna kick our butts.” Luffy whispered in a fearful voice. His whisper was met by a quiet “shh” as she hid them both behind some trees and underbrush. There were plenty of nice big trees for them to hide behind, but it was a matter of them knowing where the sound came from to properly hide. Just by the amount Robin peeked out from behind the tree left Luffy completely out of the loop, but when he was about to complain that he couldn’t see. The carefree crunching of sticks and leaves, and the overwhelming presence that his grandfather brought with him shut him up.

“Where are you, you little brat?! There’s no way in hell I’m going to let you be a pirate! You’re going to be a marine and you’re going to like it!” He boomed, he wasn’t happy about this. But he couldn’t just let him keep saying the wrong thing like that. What’s the point of having a dream if you didn’t profess it to the world and didn’t let people tell you to have a different dream?

“No way! I’m not gonna become some dumb ol marine like you! I already told you I’m gonna be the King of the Pirates!” Luffy yelled back, accidentally giving away their position. All Robin’s effort had been for not, but he was proud of his dreams and he wouldn’t let his Grandpa try and talk him into some other dream by force.

The silence was the most foreboding part. Not even a bird chirping, or a beetle doing it thing, or any animal scurrying around the underbrush. It was like the entire world knew that this wasn’t going to be pretty. But Luffy had accepted his fate from the moment he opened his mouth. Soon he heard the sound of tons of leaves rustling like they were in a really bad wind storm and the snapping of wood.

Regret was not something that Luffy was feeling, but fear was definitely something that he was. It seemed like Robin was on the same page, so she took off running. Soon a tree went flying through the forest, obliterating the tree behind them. This was bad. Really bad. Robin’s attempts of running away and finding somewhere to hide were probably made infinitely harder by Luffy’s screaming, but she didn’t know the horror that was the Fist of Love.

“GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE TURD! I’LL TEACH YOU NOT TO SASS YOUR DEAR OLD GRANDPA LIKE THAT!” His angry yelling echoed through the entire mountain side as the chase began. Robin was probably gonna learn real fast about how life on the mountain was. It was probably a good thing because she was gonna stay with them and be pirates with them and be on his crew. He did decide after all.

Since Robin was focusing on getting back to the hut so she could get the child untangled, warn them about the oncoming threat, and fight back, Luffy could be the eyes on the back of her head to make sure that they weren’t getting any more trees lobbed at them. It was a fairly easy job, as Grandpa was storming his way through the jungle and no trees were going to slow him down much. Especially when he was just knocking them out of the way like they were hollow. Or a bandit at supper time.

His job was arguably as important as hers. Because he had to yell “tree” a good four times as they weaved between trees that were already there. Robin was really good at this, she even jumped over it twice before they finally managed to get some distance between them.

They arrived at the bandits’ hut, and Luffy had to admit he had never been so happy to see a mountain bandit in his entire life. Even if they did get a snort or two of amusement from the fact that they weren’t the ones in this situation. Sabo tried to keep back his laughter, but Ace did not.

“You gotta help untie me cause Grandpa’s on his way up and he’s going to kick all our butts!” It was quite the serious situation and he had no idea why they were laughing at them, but mostly him. At the very least one of the bandits did untie him, causing him to fly a bit backwards as his arms went back to their normal size making him stumble backwards when he landed and fall right on his butt.

Their lead they had wasn’t much, Grandpa was already storming up the mountain path. If he was going to be a good captain, he was going to have to be able to stand up to his fears to protect his crew. And right now that meant standing up to Grandpa. He could do this.

He jumped in front of Robin, as if she had been the target this whole time. His knees were shaking, but he was going to be a good captain, and he was going to repay her for saving his life yesterday. It was only fair. “Don’t fight him, Robin! He’s too strong!” Luffy warned.

His courage was met with a punch so hard that it actually hurt his rubber skin. His hands instantly went to the goose egg on his forehead whimpering little “ow ow ow”s as he continued to hesitantly touch the bump.

“So, you gonna answer the question right this time? Are you, or are you not going to become a marine?!”

“Of course not! I’m going to be a pirate!”

Another punch was delivered, though it was a moment of delay. It was almost like someone tried to hold him back, but his sheer strength let him break through like it was nothing.

“Why can’t you be like Ace, he’s going to be a marine, aren’t you Ace?” Grandpa asked, looking at the freckled boy, who wasn’t finding Luffy’s twin lumps nearly as funny as he did before.

“Why would I want to be a marine?! I’m going to be a pirate!” Ace said, knowing full well what was coming to him.

“Yeah! The four of us are going to be pirates!” Luffy interjected, as if he didn’t have enough lumps on his head. Grandpa paused. They all watched as he mumbled out a head count before stopping at Sabo. He paused again, his attention going straight to Robin.

“NICO ROBIN!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!”

“SHE SAVED MY LIFE YESTERDAY SO NOW SHE’S IN MY CREW!”

“I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE GOING TO BE A MARINE!”

“WELL I DON’T WANNA!”

“WELL TO BAD BECAUSE- WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?!” Luffy hadn’t even noticed until now that Sabo had taken his wrist and was dragging him into the forest, and Ace was leading Robin away to the woods.

“RUN!” Yelled Ace, as he broke out into a sprint.

“Cien fleur: Delphinium!” Robin called, as hands sprouted from the ground, grabbing the boys and passing them along as they sped along the mountain side.

“GET BACK HERE! I’LL SHOW YOU BRATS WHAT FOR!”

The chase was on.

Chapter Text

She had been used to doing things like this. Her whole life had been running from marines, though these boys probably didn’t have the same kind of experience. Or at least not the same amount that she had. She really hoped that they didn’t. They were still so young and it was always painful to see children in situations such as this one. At least in this instance, it was just one marine. It was a single vice-admiral, but it was no reason to lower her guard.

Dealing with high ranking officers is always a difficult thing. And she had more than just her own wellbeing to worry about this time. There was just something about these kids that made her want to protect them. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that these children were in this situation because of her, and it seemed as though she wasn’t the only one in serious trouble.

If the sound of trees crashing behind them, it sounded like they were all in a similar amount of trouble, but hers ended in arrest and theirs ended in grounding. Though as it stood, it seemed as though they were in for the same treatment that she was going to be in for. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for their safety. At least she could keep them safe for now and get them out of harm’s way for the time being.

The looming sound of foliage breaking behind them seemed to only be getting closer. There had to be at least somewhere for them to hide and lay low for a bit. The children lived in this area, surely they had to know at least one good spot to hide here. Though looking down, she could see that the three of them were more focused on just running away in a straight line, as they preferred it to being carried on a wave of hands and had bailed off a good half mile ago.

Maybe since she was no longer focusing on making sure the children were keeping up, since they seemed to be doing a good enough job on their own, she could at least buy them some time to escape. Crossing her arms across her chest, she bloomed a few eyes so she could find the rampaging vice admiral, and a pair of hands to trip him up by grabbing onto his ankles.

The distant sounds of crashing could be heard, followed by loud angry yelling. Actually this was probably a bad plan, and she really should have thought this through better. Her attempt at buying time had gotten them a little, but she had a gut feeling that she had only proved to anger the beast and now the punishment was only going to be more severe that what it would have been. Not some of her finest work, but if they managed to find a spot to lay low for a-

“I’m tired of running. I’m going to stand and fight. I’m sure I can land at least one punch on the old fart. You guys get out of here.” Ace ordered, stopping abruptly and putting himself between them and the angry mountain of a main currently plowing through the jungle.

“There’s no way that you’re fighting this on your own. If you’re going to be an idiot, then at least let me give you a hand.” Sabo sighed, before joining the side of the other foolish child.

“Hey! You guys aren’t gonna have all the fun! I can fight too you know!” Luffy insisted, running back and putting himself in front of the other boys.

“You’re the worst fighter out of all of us! Just keep running! What are you gonna do? Cry on him until he stops?” Ace taunted, making the youngest puff out his cheeks and stomp his feet.

“I’m a great fighter! My punches are like pistols!” The stomping only got worse when his counter argument was met with a dismissive scoff. As adorable as the scene was. This really was not the time for them to have this discussion. They needed to get out of there and find somewhere to hide.

Arms sprouted from under them, knocking them backwards, then back onto hands. If they weren’t going take this seriously, then she was going to have to take action for them. Reasonable action that didn’t include getting into an unnecessary fight that would no doubt end in total defeat. Vice Admiral Garp didn’t seem like he was in any mood to be pulling punches, even if they were just children.

Her actions were met with nothing but disapproval and squirming. They were going to get out of here safe and sound, whether or not they were in the mood to cooperate with her or not. The time that she had bought them had already been wasted so there was no time to lose, surely there had to be a cave somewhere or something. Eyes had already been dispatched around the area for something that could be of use to them. Really anything at all. Though it was hard to juggle that, running in the forest, constantly sprouting arms, and managing three children who thought the best plan of attack in this situation would be to tackle the problem head on.

In most situations, that would probably be a good course of action. However this was not most situations, and this was a fight that they’d no doubt lose because of the difference in both years of actual experience in much worse situations and years of honing skills and techniques.

Not to mention that it was a lot easier to take on three at once and let the confusion of the fight let them take each other out. It wouldn’t be that hard, especially with the abysmal teamwork skills they were currently displaying as Luffy and Ace took this chance to fight among each other as Sabo was once again, being the reasonable one and trying to break them up by reminding them of the situation at hand. Thankfully at least one of them had some reason in this whole mess.

“YOU DAMN BRATS! DON’T YOU RUN FROM YOUR BELOVED GRANDPA!” The vice admiral bellowed, as he closed the gap between them. This was very much so not good. After ten long years of avoiding the World Government, it seemed as though her time was up. This would end in her arrest, and no doubt a lot of physical pain for these children. And they all went through it because she had made a bad call and her luck finally ran out. At least she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

It took every arm that she could manage to bloom at one point to briefly delay a punch. The power from it was simply unbelievable. Though it was to be expected from someone of his rank. Not to mention the sheer force of the punch even after it had lost some of the force behind it. She was glad that the children had time to get out of the way before it was delivered, because that seemed altogether too harsh to be aimed at a child. This man was insane.

The children scrambled about, but it seemed as though it wasn’t to escape, but simply to find better vantage points to strike. What were these kids even? Was this simply how their family worked, or was this them being fed up of being pushed around and them taking a stand? But the reality of the matter was, it was stupid and dangerous, and really just a bad idea over all. If this was an attempt to make them stronger, there had to be a better way.

Mostly because it lasted all of about seconds, and it quickly shifted from an attempt to perhaps defend themselves, to now the four of them being thrown around the mountain side by various methods. The most prominent was being punched, but there was also some actual throws in the mix. It got hard to tell when she had been added to the equation with no hopes of saving herself. But there was something about the blows that she could tell that he was holding back, despite how painful his punches were currently. So perhaps he wasn’t as completely awful as she had previously thought. But it wouldn’t change her stance on how insane all of this was.

Before she even knew what was happening, she was being dragged back up the mountain, alongside the boys. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t really do anything to help them. Even now, everything was all fuzzy and she couldn’t really make heads or tails of any of this. She could only vaguely recognize the new path that had been carved thanks to the rampage the vice admiral had gone on.

Looking to her side, she saw that the three of them were in the same state that she was at the moment. Even though she was probably going to be imprisoned after all of this, she couldn’t help but worry for their wellbeing. They were just kids, and no doubt they were going to be in incredible amounts of trouble for this. Not only had they taken in a known criminal, but they had also befriended her and were making plans for her to stay there indefinitively with them. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know she was a criminal, it was fairly common knowledge who she was.

She could feel her thoughts get hazier and hazier as she felt herself slowly passing out as she was drug up the mountain. Though worries of the boys futures still lingered as everything faded to black.

Chapter Text

The boys were still out when she came to. She had planned to leave much sooner than this, but things had happened, and her departure had been put off by quite a long time. She no longer knew exactly how long it was, but it was certainly no longer morning like it was when they were all knocked out by Vice Admiral Garp. She didn’t want to just leave them in a situation like this, but at the same time, having them follow her around would just end horribly for all. They’d be caught and used as bait to draw her out, and then that would no doubt be the end of her. Even if they didn’t want to be used as bait, no doubt the marines would use them and word of mouth to draw her out of hiding.

Not to mention the fact that she could barely find a place willing to accept her, let alone three rambunctious children. She barely had enough to eat, and when she did, she was usually on a pirate crew. She had to say, against her better judgement, it was way better for them to stay here. It didn’t seem like the Vice Admiral stopped by all that much anyways. It wasn’t really ideal, but this was the lesser of the two evils. And if these children started to care for her, she could already tell that it would land the three dead, and she couldn’t bear the knowledge that she had their blood on her hands. If she could help them avoid having a childhood like hers, then she’d gladly sneak off while they were still out cold. It’d probably be best if they didn’t say their good byes anyways.

Using her devil fruit powers, she scanned the area. It didn’t seem like anyone noticed the eyes, and it seemed like everyone else was preoccupied with something, so right now was the perfect time for her to escape. She couldn’t hesitate, no matter how much she wanted to say good bye to these boys. She would miss them, but cutting all ties with them would ensure that without a doubt that they’d be safe from the darkness that followed her.

Just as she had done time and time again, she slid out through the window. It was a fairly high drop, but second story wasn’t that bad. Her landing was silent, and from there she started sneaking her way down towards the nearest village. No doubt there’d be some pirate crew that she could seduce her way onto. It wasn’t something that she was proud of, but it worked for a little bit, at least until they found out who she was, and then beri turned into a much more effective seductress than  she could ever be. But by that point, she was good at making the trail go cold, and the pirates would end up getting themselves arrested. It was easy, and she never felt bad for it. It was mutual betrayal, so why even feel bad about it.

She was guarded since she left, just in case, but somehow regardless of her skill, the Vice Admiral still managed to sneak up on her. It probably had to do with the fact that he was expecting something like this, but it still astonished her none the less. She had managed to escape marines time and time again, but this was perhaps her pride getting in the way. She should’ve been more careful. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and she braced for the worst. She had arms on him, but despite her best efforts, he didn’t budge.

“I’m not here to fight you, Nico Robin. Hell, I’m not even here to arrest you.” He stated, but never moved his hand off her shoulder.

“Oh, then what are your motives, Vice Admiral?” Inwardly she was terrified, but she refused to show it outwardly. To do so would mean her end. You never show weakness to the enemy.

“Nah, I heard what you did for my boys. I gotta thank you. I know that they can be a handful, and sometimes they get in over their heads. It was only a matter of time before they almost ended up with their ass kicked. So I’m gonna return the favor. I’ll give you the same offer I did with Dadan and her bandits. Plus you seem like an alright kid. I doubt you’d use your knowledge to hurt anyone like that anyway. So how about it. You stay here and help take care of my boys, and I’ll turn a blind eye to the fact you have a bounty on your head. I could probably even have them pull it completely. So what do’ya say?” It wasn’t every day that an offer like that was just given, certainly not by a marine. Needless to say, she was skeptical. It most certainly had to be a trick.

“Look, I know it sounds like a trick, but you’ll be as safe as my grandsons. Ace is Roger’s son, and Luffy’s Dragon’s son. I don’t know where the other one came from, this is my first time seeing him, but the three of them are safe up here. I’m telling you all this, because my word holds more strength with the world government, and you like the boys so I know you won’t hurt them. Dadan and her men do as they please and I have the government turn a blind eye to it. You’re not the type to actively cause trouble, so I doubt you’ll be much of a concern here. So it’s settled then, yeah?”  He started to pull her back to the hut.

“I appreciate the offer, but I really can’t do this. I’m already a criminal. I’d just be putting them in danger.”

“Well if that’s the case, Ace and Luffy are just as big of criminals as you are. You can’t help where you’re born, or who your parents are. Ace and Luffy both have dangerous criminals as fathers, so you being born on Ohara with archaeologists as your parents is no more your fault than it is theirs. They’re no more in danger with you than they are here. And that blond one is already with my grandsons, so he’s about equal amounts of danger anyways. Besides, they’re kids, trouble finds them anyway, bwahahahaha.” The oddly jovial old man laughed.

Part of her wanted to keep doubting, because this was a marine vice admiral, and he in particular seemed to be quite a skilled one. It would be easy to just lie to her and trap her this way with less of a struggle. But at the same time, if he was going to arrest her, he would’ve known better than to just toss her in the boys’ room with them instead of just capturing her when she was vulnerable. It would be a stupid move to just let her be in a room with three innocent children that she could easily be turned into hostages. Not that she would, but she was a criminal after all. There were a lot of rumors about her, and none of them were things that made her fall under the category of people you wanted around children, even children being raised by bandits.

But struggle was futile, and she was drug back into the hut and spun around to face the stunned crowd of bandits, who were probably more than find with her leaving to go back to the sea.

“Everyone, meet my new granddaughter, Nico Robin. She’s gonna be living here from now on. And just like with my boys, she had better be ready with the mind set to join the marines. I’ll be back later to check up on her.”

There was absolute silence, as shock had taken over the room. That was not part of what they agreed on, and it also didn’t seem like something that was even remotely possible. Living up here was probably going to mean very few trips to town as it was, but to think of her actually being a marine was unreasonable. The world government was one of her biggest obstacles in her way to finding the true history. Even if she could join their ranks, it would be impossible for her to see all the poniglyphs. They would make sure of that. That wasn’t even taking into consideration that she already had a bounty on her head, so the only conceivable way for her to join the military was to become one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. She might’ve been strong, but she was nowhere near that strong.

Besides, the Seven Warlords were merely allied with the marines, and not actually part of it. Her criminal record was far too big for her to rationally be able to join.

“Garp please be reasonable! She’s a grown woman! With a bounty! There’s no way that they’re going to be able to get her in! It’s bad enough that you dumped two of those brats here already! Now you’re dropping of a third! You can’t even adopt a grown woman like that!” Dadan scolded.

“Well I’ll see you around!” Garp said cheerfully, completely unaffected by what Dadan had to say on the subject as he left as quickly as he came. Who know marines could be so carefree and irresponsible. Perhaps this was the reason the entire time she had been here Dadan had been chain smoking a minimum of two cigarettes at a time. It had to be a way to deal with the stress of your operation being turned into a daycare. At the very least she was eighteen and not a child.

But regardless, it looked like she was staying.

Chapter Text

Waking up, it was obvious that Robin had already left. He knew that it made sense, but dammit he was going to have to deal with Luffy crying. Luffy had already proven that he was more than able to follow him, so listening to him bitch and moan was pretty much unavoidable. He stopped crying that one time, but he wasn’t really ready to risk his patience twice. They had to find her for the sake of their sanity and them not being the ones to kill Luffy themselves.

This in no way had anything to do with the fact he maybe was starting to think she was cool for standing up to their grandpa like that. It wasn’t like she didn’t know who he was or anything. She knew damn well that he was a high ranking marine or something equally stupid when she did it. It might not’ve been a fight fight, but she still challenged him. She didn’t even back down either. She stood her ground, even if she did run.

Gramps was a force to be reckoned with. Even he ran away from fights with him. She may have been some big name, but she wasn’t stupid enough to fight and actual fight with him. It was a little cowardly to pick a fight you had no intention of actually fighting, but at least in this case it was understandable. He’d forgive it this time, but he wouldn’t in any other circumstance.

Looking around the room, it seemed that he was the only one up. This meant that he had to do this on his own, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to wait around and just hope that woke up soon so that they could do something about the fact that no one knew how long it had been since Robin had snuck off and how she could be anywhere right now. Sitting around wasn’t going to do anything for him but give Robin more time to escape. That was stupid so there was no way in hell that was going to happen.

The front door wasn’t an option. It would mean sneaking through the main room and risk getting seen by gramps. That would be too risky because it would give them both away and he’d end up messing things up for her worse that she had probably done for herself by standing up for them. At least if she was getting away, he wanted her to be alive. That way, when he took off to sea, there’d be a chance that he’d at least see her again. She’d no doubt end up executed. And he really didn’t want it to be their fault that she died.

That meant the window in their room was the only way for him to escape and not be noticed. It was a little bit of a jump, but only babies couldn’t make a jump like that. He was too tough for something like that to be enough of an obstacle. He made jumps that were way farther than that.

But when he landed, he did look around to make sure that no one heard him jump and bust him. The last thing he needed right now was a second of training with gramps. It would hurt and it would end up no doubt drawing attention to the fact Robin was gone and then things would only go south from there. Then he’d no doubt fail in his mission and then there would be no saving her.

He’d track her just like he would an animal. If she was wanted, then there was a good chance that she was cocky like a bunch of the other pirates that he stole from. And that meant that she wouldn’t bother to cover her tracks. It was a stupid thing to do, because the ground here was soft enough to leave foot prints in some spots. And she would leave footprints if she wore those heels. She didn’t seem like the type just walk around barefoot in the woods, so finding her might be easier than he thought.

Five minutes into his search had proven that maybe he hadn’t given her the credit that she deserved. There were no footprints to be found, and if it weren’t for some really subtly broken foliage, he would’ve thought that she had used her devil fruit power to walk on her hands or something. In his opinion, that was cheating. But that was an opinion of someone who did not have a devil fruit, and had he had one himself, he would have no doubt used it to help him whenever he could. And Robin’s was pretty cool. It was a lot cooler that Luffy’s useless power, but that’s not saying much. What kind of devil fruit power was being rubber? (Aside from a really lame one).

Something he had failed to notice when he was coming down the mountain, was the fact that a second much bigger path was drawing closer. He didn’t really see it until it had merged with his own, and he was really surprised that he didn’t see it sooner when he was looking for where Robin had snuck off to. But that was only a minor shock compared to what he came across next.

Robin and gramps had been in a narrow clearing, talking about something. It didn’t seem like it was too friendly of a conversation, but regardless, he drew close to hear what they were talking about. It was no doubt something awful, but he couldn’t help but wonder what it was. If he was going to bring back bad news, he wasn’t going to mess it up from anyone.

And that’s when he heard it clear as day.

“Ace is Roger’s son.”

Words that brought dread and fear into every part of his body. Echoes of what was no doubt going to be said. He had heard it all before.

“Son of the devil”, “shouldn’t exist”, “scum of the earth”, and other things of that nature. It was clear that no matter who had a say in the son of the Pirate King, it was never anything good. He had met one person, and that was one of the reasons he had allowed Sabo to be his right hand man in all his endeavors. Whatever he had said about Luffy, he had missed completely. He was presently too anxious about this knowledge being spread. It was understandable, but he didn’t want anyone to know about it. It was a weakness, and weakness was something that he really couldn’t afford to have. The weak died, and that was just the way the world worked.

If it wouldn’t have drawn attention to him, he would’ve yelled at him right then for telling, but gramps was someone that he could trust, and someone who despite everything he done to make it feel otherwise, kept him safe. If he was doing something like this, it had to be for a damn good reason.

He waited to see her reaction, but it was one of surprise and shock, rather than one of repulsion. And then she said something about her being a criminal that would put them in danger. Part of him said that it was a lie, but he couldn’t help but be a bit curious as to see if she keeps with it or if she goes back on it and treats him like the demon he was.

They went back up to the hut, and he followed quietly behind. He was going to see how this plays out. Keeping quiet and staying out of view was something that he could do well. There was plenty of time for him to practice as he and Sabo both made their money for the ship that they were going to buy by stealing. You didn’t get anywhere in theft by being obvious. Luffy would have to be taught that so that he wouldn’t get in their way when he no doubt followed them down to the city to rob people in Edge Town.

What he heard shouldn’t have been surprising. Gramps was just as pig headed as him and Luffy, and he must’ve taken a liking to her when he found out that she had saved Luffy’s life (which she didn’t need to do because they could’ve easily done without her). Once he had decided that he was going to do something, he was going to do everything in his power do make sure that that thing happened. So no doubt she was going to have to stay here. The fact that she had to also become a marine was stupid, because she was obviously more suited to the pirate life with him and his brothers, but since gramps wanted them to be marines too, it wasn’t too unreasonable for him to want to be one too. Well it was, but no more than his other demands.

It wasn’t something Dadan couldn’t pretend like she was trying to do. She had done it with him and Luffy, and she was going to have to do it with Robin. Sabo was also there, so he would no doubt join this club soon enough. But at the same time he had already had to deal with some of the training without being told that he had to be a marine, which was a little funny.

He’d let them deal with the rest, and he didn’t really care about how this ended. So he just left them to their affairs, and climbed his way back into the room. It wasn’t a challenge, but it was a little annoying. Sabo and Luffy were still out cold, but they’d be up soon enough. Robin still knew the truth, so he’d just sit back and wait to see what she had to say about that. Because only time would tell at this point.

He’d talk to her later in private.

Chapter Text

She had begun to worry about the children. She wasn’t exactly sure how long that they were unconscious for, but it felt like it was far too long at this point. It might’ve been because the conversation with Garp felt like it had lasted a lot longer than it actually did. Being powerless and fearing for your life did that. And then the fact that she was now down here in an awkwardly silent moment as everyone down there with her also tried to piece together what happened. To be fair, it wasn’t every day that a Marine Vice Admiral came and forced someone who barely qualified as an adult, who had a hefty bounty on her head, and told you that she was going to live here and was to be trained to be a proper marine.

And as a result, she was now living with people who would be better off if she were simply handed off to the marines so that they could make a profit off her bounty. It was a bounty that was no longer valid, but she knew that without a doubt if she was brought to the World Government, she would without be taken, regardless of her bounty being inactive. She knew full well what her position was.

But in the off chance that Garp hadn’t been lying to her about how Luffy was Dragon the Revolutionary’s son, and Ace was the son of Gold Roger, there stood to reason that there was a chance that she would in fact be safe here. The fact that he would still tell her so casually astounded her. This was extremely dangerous information to have, and all it would take would be to take this information to a marine and give the instruction not to tell the Vice Admiral, and she could easily make a profit from this and she could just as easily killed two children with dangerous potential.

Really, he was lucky that she knew the position that those boys would be in their entire lives. It would be a rough life for these boys, but so long as this information was kept private, they would be safe. She wasn’t sure if this was an oversight on the Vice Admiral’s part, or if this was just a clever manipulation tactic on his part to get her to stay. Either way, she had to say it was a fairly effective trick. There was still a feeling that she was going to be betrayed like this. She could still get off this island if she needed to.

But even if she could make it to another island, and to safety, there was still the fact that the boys were still on the island, and it’d be too dangerous for them to come with her. She had been over this already, but her worries stayed none the less. But she really had no other choice than to stay here for the time being. It wasn’t her ideal plan, but it was what she had to deal with. She just had to hope that they would in fact be safe.

The fact that she would in fact be staying, left everyone, herself included, unsure on how to proceed. The entire tone in the hut filled with mountain bandits who all uncomfortably shifted about, looking anywhere but her. It was completely understandable. Not a lot of high valued bounties came around these parts, certainly none like hers. She couldn’t say that she was great at small talk, seeing as she usually spoke to the point and there weren’t any words that she could think of that would remedy this situation, so she chose to stay silent. She had a feeling that everyone here was in the same boat.

But luckily, it seemed as though they wouldn’t need to start this conversation, as it seemed a third party had joined them, and he was more than willing to do the talking for everyone. It really shouldn’t have caught her off guard, since she had just bloomed an eye in the room to check up on them, and found that the room was completely empty. It was entirely likely that they could’ve just gone out the window as she had, but this was also a very likely option she supposed. Luffy was the first one to come out of the back rooms with the force of someone who had just been flung. Given his devil fruit and his energy, it was very likely that he was the one who flung himself.

“RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBBBBBBBBBBBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!” The drawn out and almost tangible wail came from the child that was flying at her with the speed of a fully stretched rubber band and the grace of an emotional drunk.

A few extra hands had bloomed to help her catch him, and a few legs to keep her from toppling over from the sheer force that the boy had gathered as he flew through the air. It was fairly easy to see now how those boys had managed to take down such a beast earlier. Technique might’ve been missing in the young boy, but the power was most certainly there.

While avoiding being knocked over had been preventable, the arms that wrapped around her a couple times seemed to be a reoccurring thing. It would probably be something that she would grow used to over the next little while. Hopefully being covered in snot and tears as she was now, was not. It was not really something that she had too much experience in dealing with, but regardless, it seemed as though she would have to figure something out to comfort the child who was in tears in her arms. Her disgust for how gross this kinda was would have to be put aside for now.

“Yes Luffy? Is everything alright?” She asked softly, making note of the other two boys who lingered in the door way as to make sure that whatever problem they were having was resolved. They were probably making sure that Garp was gone. It wasn’t an uncommon sight for men to try to hide their feelings with indifference. Some were just a lot better at doing it. They’d either grown out of it, or they would simply learn how to manage to do it without being so easy to read.

“I thought you had gone and snuck off without telling us and we were gonna have to wait to see you again out at seas and I already gotta wait to see Shanks again and you’re not allowed to leave because you’re going to be part of my crew and if you do leave I’m gonna have to look all across all the Blues to find you because you’re part of my crew and if you leave without me you’ll be all alone and I’ll be a little more alone and being alone is the worst so you gotta stay hear.” The plea was only mostly coherent, but she had gotten most of it. Even if she hadn’t heard his and Ace’s conversation last night, it was obvious that being alone was something that Luffy was deeply afraid of.

She couldn’t help but be touched by these words. At least this time she had some good news to tell him, and it wouldn’t be as painful as last time. Though she had a feeling that it wouldn’t stop the tears, she’d at the very least turn them from tears of desperation, to tears of joy. It seemed that despite their short time together, Luffy (and without a doubt the other two, who kept sneaking glances over as they attempted their cool indifference on the other end of the room) had grown fond of her. She could say that these boys, despite some of their rougher edges, had gotten her to warm up to them too. They were quite the sweethearts, despite everything.

“Well, then I guess you’re in luck. It seems your Grandfather has taken me under his wing, and I’ll be staying here with you here for a while.” She chuckled lightly, patting the boy’s head. She watched as the boy’s entire face lit up. She had never expected to have that effect on a person. Certainly not in a situation like this. Life had odd little moments to say the least.

“REALLY?! YOU’RE GONNA STAY WITH US! That means you’re going to train with us too, right?! Because we were gonna go train right after we talked you into staying! You should come with us and you should teach us all sorts of really cool fighting moves that you learned at sea! I bet you know a ton because you got such a high bounty!  And I can show you how my punches are as strong as pistols! You’re gonna be really impressed! And and and and I bet Sabo and Ace fight real good too but I don’t know how good Sabo fight cause I’ve only ever seen him fight an alligator and not a human and I know that Ace is really strong because he made it really hard for me to keep up with him for like ever but I finally did and-“The now really excited bundle in her arms rambled, having a million things to say, and not enough breath to say it all. She could see the other two trying to hide their excitement. In their defense, it wasn’t every day a new devil fruit user came along, and it was always interesting to see a new fighting style.

She had to admit, as much as the children were excited, she was interested in watching the three fight. It had to be quite the sight to behold.

“Alright, but you have to lead the way.”

Chapter Text

They hadn’t actually sparred together yet. This was actually the first time that they had ever actually hung out together outside of the hut and that they weren’t hunting. Hunting was really fun, and he got to see that Ace wasn’t just really sneaky, but he was also really really strong. And Sabo was just as strong as Ace was. He didn’t even know how strong Robin was, but she took down those pirates like they were nothing, so she had to be even stronger than they were. She was still nowhere near Gramps level, because if she was, she would’ve just fought him at the hut also he wouldn’t’ve kicked their asses if she was.

But that was in the past, and he was going to just move past that. Grampa was scary, so he liked to just pretend like their encounters with him, because just in general it made him sleep better at night, because that meant that he didn’t have to think about how little warning he gave them before he showed up and kicked their asses. It wasn’t like he was really one to worry and dwell on things like that, but Grampa was a special exception, because he could kick his ass better than anyone he had ever seen.

Those thoughts were shook out of his head, and instead focused his thoughts on the song he was singing as they were off to the spot where they were gonna fight. He had tons of songs that he could sing, because Shanks had taught him tons of pirate songs, and even more sea shanties, so there was no real shortage of songs that he could sing. That being said, he sung none of those songs, and instead went on to make one of his own.

“THEEEEEEERRRRREEEEE ARE lots of trees but there’s probably not when we’re gonna go and we’re gonna fight a lot and I’m probably gonna win and it’s gonna be real cool and it’s gonna be real fun because I’ve never really seen Ace and Sabo fight a human that wasn’t me and I didn’t really get to see Robin FIIIIIIIIIIGHT.” Luffy sung loudly and obnoxiously. That was really the only way to sing. If you weren’t singing with all your heart than there really was no point of singing was there.

He heard Robin chuckle, but that’s okay because Robin was cool and too nice to laugh at him. She must’ve just liked his song. Sabo didn’t seem to like it, but Ace seemed to get annoyed. Really that was his problems, because there was still tons of time until they got to there probably. And that just meant that there was more time for singing. Which was good because he could feel a second verse coming on.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAND THEEEEEEEEEEERESSSSSSSSSSS still more trees and lots of rocks and there’s probably lots of birds but the birds don’t matter cause we’re gonna fight and Robin and Sabo like my song and Ace’s head’s turning red cause he’s really mad but that don’t mean I’m gonna STOOOOO-“ His singing was cut short by a fist to the face sending him backwards onto his butt.

“STOP SINGING ALREADY!” Ace scolded him, arms crossing over his chest as he stood over him. Robin looked like she found it kinda funny, but Sabo just looked tired.

“We’re almost there, can’t you two just wait until we get there? Then you both can have…” He paused, and he kinda looked like he had made a mistake. “A lot of fights. We each get a total of one hundred fights each, remember?”

“So we get a hundred fights with each person?” That made sense to him. It seemed like that was a lot, but he was ready to fight so he could do that.

“No we get a hundred fights each. You only get a hundred a day.” Sabo explained further. That wasn’t at all what he said. Now he felt like he was gonna get cheated out of a lot of fights. Like two or three hundred fights. He wasn’t exactly sure because math was hard. It felt closer to three hundred so he’d go with that.

“But that’s like three hundred less than I thought I was gonna get!” Luffy complained.

“Where the hell’d you get three hundred from?!” Ace yelled back.

“There’s four of us! So that means we get four hundred fights!” The math checked out, so he felt like he was being completely reasonable. Even Ace knew, so he crossed his arms and did that scoff thing he did. That meant that he won. Maybe that meant that he could get all the fights like they were originally gonna do!

It was short lived because he was then hit over the head by Ace again, who seemed angry again for some stupid reason probably.

“THAT’D BE THREE HUNDRED IN TOTAL, OR ARE YOU GONNA FIGHT YOURSELF, IDIOT?” Ace scolded, like he was much better at math than he was. What a jerk!

“YOU THOUGHT IT WAS FOUR HUNDRED TOO YOU JERK!” He yelled back. Maybe they didn’t have to wait for the clearing. They could just fight right here and then Ace would have to respect him once he won!

So that meant that he had to go from on his butt, to right in his face. He was gonna show Ace just how strong he really was. His punches were as strong as pistols. Ace was gonna so impressed even though they were nowhere near as strong as Grandpa’s, but Grandpa punched like a super mega robot so that didn’t count cause he had like a million years to practice cause he was really old.

But it quickly turned into wrestling. And from there it became him getting pinned down, and Ace turning his arms and legs into knots like a cheater. He didn’t even know how hard it was to move all tied up like this!

“STOP CHEATING ACE! FIGHT ME FAIR AND SQUARE!” He flailed, trying to land a punch or a kick regardless. He wasn’t giving up. He was gonna show him just how good a fighter he really was. He was gonna show Ace just how strong he was!

“REAL FIGHTS AREN’T FAIR!” Ace said, putting a foot down on his stomach. It wouldn’t stop him from flailing aground. He wasn’t going to lose to anyone, especially not to Ace! Cause then Ace won’t think he’s cool!

“Guys really? We’re almost there! I’m counting this as one of your fights, so you’re both down to ninety nine.” Sabo groaned, pulling Ace back.

“This doesn’t count as a fight! It was barely anything! It shouldn’t cou- Don’t untie him! He’s gotta learn how to do that on his own or he’ll never make it on his own. If he wants to be a real pirate he’s gotta learn to fend for himself.” The hands that had already begun to untie him stopped, and then he felt the petals of her hands disappearing. He was kinda glad, because he needed to prove himself after all. He was hoping that Ace was watching. He was gonna be so impressed once he did it.

But it didn’t seem as though they were just gonna wait around, because Ace was already on his way down again. Sabo hesitated, but then followed Ace.

“Wait! Aren’t you gonna watch me do this?” Because they were going to be so impressed with how quickly he was gonna untie himself! They couldn’t just walk away like this. Sabo leaned over to say something to Ace, but he was too far away to hear it. Now how was he supposed to impress them before they even started the fights? This was just awful!

“Don’t worry, Luffy. I’ll stay here until you untangle your limbs and make sure you don’t get mauled by bears.” Robin reassured him, crouching down to his level on the ground.

“Oh I’m not worried about dumb bears. I can beat ‘em even with all my arms and legs all tied up like this!” Even though he was usually the one being saved when he, Ace and Sabo went hunting, he could still take down one stupid bear. He’d also ignore the chuckles from Robin, because he knew that he could do it and he definitely not sulking a little bit.

“Well, it’s always good to have someone watching, so you can just focus on getting untangled.” Oh yeah! He was still all tied up and he still needed to get outta this so he could get to fighting! What was she doing distracting him with thinking about fighting bears.

But how was he gonna untie himself? He wasn’t really the best at tying knots yet, cause that was one of the reasons why he wore sandals all the time.

Oh! But Lucky Roux did show him how to tie knots back when he was hanging out with Shanks and them! Maybe it was one of those knots. They were pirate knots so it was probably one of those ones, because Ace didn’t wear laces either! He just had to pull his arm by grabbing at the dirt more and….

“I DID IT! ROBIN LOOK!” Ace and Sabo were gonna be so jealous that Robin got to see and they didn’t. But that’s what they got for being giant buttheads.

“Very impressive Luffy. Do you need help with your feet?”

“No I’m doing this all by myself!” And even if it wasn’t his good arm, it’d still be way easier now that he could actually grab onto stuff that wasn’t ground.

“Alright, I’ll just watch then.”

Chapter Text

He had sent Robin on ahead without him. It wouldn’t have been fair if she missed the first fights too. She was at just as much of a disadvantage as he was cause she never saw how they fought people either. She didn’t even get to see how they hunted stuff so she needed all the advantage she could get. She at least got to see him undo his arms, so his legs wouldn’t take long at all. He did have hands he could use now.

It still took him like forever to get his legs untangled from each other. Who knew it was so easy to make a knot worse than it was. But he finally did it. And all on his own too! Ace and Sabo and Robin were going to be so impressed that he did it all by himself. Not even Ace would be able to deny that that was cool. He just had to find his way back to the ring now. That wasn’t that hard a job. It was just down the same way they were going.

It’d be a lot easier if there wasn’t a million trees here. But if he got rid of all the trees, then they could be followed up the mountain. And that wasn’t good because that meant it’d be easier for Granpa to find them, or someone from town to come by and make it harder for them to do stuff once they got there. It was harder to steal food if you caused more trouble than just stealing food.

But making his way down the mountain was easier than he thought. It wasn’t all that steep here, and he did a lot of flailing when he was getting untied, but he was pretty sure he was going the right way. It was kinda like hands were guiding him down the mountain and too the fighting arena, and that was really really cool. Because it was either Robin helping him with her devil fruit power from that far away, or there was a really cool ghost in the forest who wanted to be his friend. Either way, it was really really cool and exciting.

Ghost or not, he didn’t have time to think about such things, because he had found the arena that they were all going to fight in. It was gonna be one on one, but they were still all going to fight in it at some point. But mostly he was just excited to see Ace and Sabo and Robin fight. And then he could show them his punches as strong as pistols and they’d be all impressed because they were just that good.

Sabo and Ace were going first, and it was a really close fight from what he could tell. It was probably because they already knew all of each other’s moves so they knew what was coming a mile away. He couldn’t wait to fight them, because he knew that they wouldn’t be able to see his moves cause no one had his moves. He was the only rubber man on the planet, and if there was someone on the island with a cool devil fruit like his, he’d know it. You couldn’t just keep those kinds a thing a secret forever after all.

But his spot wasn’t that good. He needed to get closer so he could see all the action happening and learn their moves for his turn. Just a little bit closer and he’d have the perfect view.

Immediately everything started spinning, because hands popped out of the ground and rolled him around the ring and to Robin’s side on the other end of the ring. Once the world stayed still, his view was a lot better than it was on the other side. Like a million times better.

“Thanks Robin.” He beamed, getting a pat on the head from her. This whole display was enough to distract Ace enough to get knocked flat on his ass by Sabo.

“Hey! That’s no fair! Luffy distracted me by being dumb and spinning around the ring like a dumbass.” Ace protested, getting back up.

“I thought real fights weren’t fair. There’s no rules about getting distracted and losing.” Sabo taunted, getting a punch to the shoulder from Ace as a response. A hand by the board took the chalk and added a point to Sabo. So right now it was 2-3 with Sabo winning.

“I’m fighting Luffy next.” Ace grunted, cracking his knuckles. Ace had like three years on him, but that didn’t really matter because Ace and Sabo took down plenty of people that were older than them all the time. So who was to say he didn’t have a chance, even if he was younger. He did have a few new tricks up his sleeve.

He got up and bounded over, bouncing back and forth on his feet once he got there, and waited for the sign to be given.

“Bing bing.” Sabo dinged, doing his best to copy the sound of a bell before a fight. He wasn’t going to let Ace get in the first move. He lunged forward throwing his first punch, he closed his eyes to make sure that all the force he could put behind it was given.

Ace was quick though. He didn’t even see the punch being thrown, but he knocked him square in the face. He almost fell back, but he wasn’t going to give up that easily. Not a chance!

He didn’t land on his butt, so he was still in the fight. Another lunge, another punch, and another counter. And it happened at least three times in a row. Lunge, punch, counter.

After about four times, he stopped, he was going to counter him this time and see just how much he liked it.

“What, so you’re done punching yourself in the face? I thought devil fruits were supposed to do cool stuff and make you stronger like Robin’s. So your power is you can stretch and punch yourself in the face? That’s probably the lamest power out there.” Ace sneered. And that really pissed him off.

“My power’s plenty cool! It makes it so I can stand up to all sorts of attacks and they don’t even hurt. You’re just a liar and were blaming me for all those punches you jerk! And how did you not feel any of those punches?! I know they hit!” Did Ace have a secret devil fruit this whole time, or was he really just that strong that he didn’t even feel them. Because that would mean he was as strong as Gramps or Shanks.

“You were punching the ground and your fist bounced back up and nailed you in the face. The funniest part was that I could really tell you were trying. If you didn’t close your eyes you’d’ve seen that. Idiot.”

“He’s lying, right?” He said, ignoring Ace and turning to the crowd of two.

“You were hitting the ground.”

“I’m sorry but you didn’t land a single blow. Even that first one, your fist soared right over his shoulders.”

“No way! I could’ve sworn I hit him!”

“I already told you you missed!” And then he definitively felt the fist on the back of his head. It didn’t hurt so much as it was startling. And rude!

“Hey! I was talking to Sabo and Robin! You can’t just hit me like that!”

“There’s no rules against it, and that’s how I lost a point last round. Because there was an idiot in the crowd who distracted me!” Another punch, but he wasn’t quite out yet. He was sure that this punch landed for sure, because he watched it. He also watched his arm basically turn to spaghetti and lose any power that it had before, which wasn’t fair at all, because he tried really hard to throw a really good shot and it messed up really good and that really sucked.

Not only that, but the blow ended up knocking him back from the force of his arm fixing itself and turning back into an arm and stop being a noodle. It was so much that he ended up landing on his butt. And that wasn’t fair at all because he was really hoping that he’d win his first match here but he didn’t.

“And now you lost because you got distracted AND because your devil fruit power is stupid.”

“Give him time and I’m sure he’ll learn how to use it. I’ve had tons of practice with my fruit and I still find myself learning new secrets about it.” Robin chimed in.

“See, Robin thinks my powers are cool.”

“No she said that it might be cool if you weren’t an idiot!”

“Both of you are stupid! She said it could be cool, he just doesn’t have enough practice with it yet.”

And then it turned into them trying to correct each other by talking over each other, but he was the loudest, so he was the most right. So there. It was settled by Robin covering all their mouths to quiet them. Which was a cool move really. He couldn’t help but wonder if he could do a cool thing like that with his powers.

“I believe we aren’t done with our little sparring matches, correct?”

They had forgot all about that! Or at least he did. They’d settle this like men then, and he was going to win every battle to show that he was right.

Chapter Text

It had to have been a good few hours of sparring. Naturally, Robin won every one of her fights, Luffy lost every one of his fights, and Ace and Sabo broke about even, with Sabo taking the victory by a mean one win. He’d have to remember to thank Luffy for the loss later. He’d probably do so with his fists. That would be the only way to get an idiot like him to understand. But probably not even then. The rubber must’ve made his head thicker so messages too longer to pound in.

Someone was going to have to teach him these things. The idiot was going to get himself killed out there, and if he was going to probably end up doing that anyways, it should be for something not stupid like being a loud and obnoxious brat who gets in the way of fights and ends up making you come in second last place for the day when you were so close to victory you could taste it.

That was just one example, and he honestly didn’t care if he lived or died one way or the other. You had to either be tough, or rich to make it in this world, and the sooner Luffy learned this, the better. Because he didn’t want to keep saving him because it was a real pain in the ass for him when he had to keep saving him because he’d get in trouble if he didn’t, because he was Gramps’ grandson too. And while he didn’t care if he lived or died personally, he did if it meant avoiding another ass beating at the hands of Gramps. And there would already be a lot of that if he found out that in the time since Luffy had got there, he had spent almost all of it trying to kill him or lose him in the forest and have him fend for himself.

But that was its own problem, and one that probably wouldn’t even happen. Because while Luffy was a lot of things, a snitch he was not. That’d end up forgotten soon enough, if Luffy hadn’t already forgotten. Right now there was a more pressing problem. One that mattered a lot more than some dumb possibility that wouldn’t even happen because Luffy was dumb. And that was that they were hungry. That meant that it was time to go hunting. Hopefully they found something fast, because he was starving. Judging by the sound of growling stomachs around him, he could tell that everyone was on the same page right now. Robin chuckled a bit at this.

“Sounds like it’s about time to head back up to the bandits’ hideout.” There was immediate scoffs and laughs from all of them. The idea of them needing the bandits for anything other than shelters and baths was dumb. They were tough men who basically lived in the forest, and Luffy wasn’t half bad at survival stuff either.

“We don’t need the bandits’ help for food. We brought the food this morning, remember?” Though she really should have, because even if they all got beaten soundly by her, she still saw them fight each other. And that wasn’t even armed. That was just fists so that no one got really hurt badly.

“You can come with us if you want! But you gotta be sneaky!” Luffy didn’t seem to fully grasp just how dumb it was for him to yell out something like that. Because one that wasn’t sneaky, and two Luffy was like the least sneaky one in their group and he had no business telling anyone to be quiet. Especially to Robin who was like the quietest person in probably the world. But Robin didn’t seemed too bothered by this, and instead crouched down and mimicked his shush motion right back at him.

“Alright. I’ll be nice and quiet.” She got a nod from Luffy, who turned and faced back to him and Sabo.

“So are we all gonna grab one thing, or are we each gonna hunt something on our own and see who can get the biggest catch?” Well originally it was just going to be them catching something big and that was it. But now the thought of him getting another chance at first was just too good. He wasn’t going to wait until tomorrow to redeem himself. Not a chance.

“We’re gonna see who can bring back the biggest catch. We’ll meet back here in about an hour and we’ll see who has the biggest catch.” It seemed like a fair amount of time in his opinion. It was plenty of time to find something and take it out. It went well with everyone, so he took off into the woods without any further questions or comments.

But first he had to decide what he was going to try to find, because it couldn’t just be anything. It had to be something big and impressive. It couldn’t be anything King of the Forest big, because that was just unreasonable and he knew that that was a battle he was going to have to hold back on until he was older, because that was just too much for him.

There was always the option of bear or crocodile. And really that was just a matter of what he came across first. Because they were both easy enough to deal with once you knew how.  He had taken down plenty of each on his own. This was going to be a walk in the park.

He kept low, and quieted his breathing as he lurked about the forest, waiting for something to pop up. There were dear moving about, but those weren’t big enough for the likes of him. Bear or crocodile was the only way he was going to win this. He could hear the river getting louder and louder, so it seemed as though today he was getting crocodile.

He soon remembered a problem that came with crocodiles, and that was that they tended to stick together in whatever the fuck crocodile packs are called. But he just needed to really get one good and the rest would scatter.

But it’d be better if he lured one away. So he picked up a rock and threw it. Perfect shot as always, and it nailed it right between the eyes. Like any rational thing, that pissed it off and it came barreling out of the water at him. If he could get it closer to the camp, he wouldn’t have to lug it through the forest all the way back, and just have to do it some of the way. And that’d be so much easier and faster. He only had an hour after all. Sure he was about fifteen minutes most into all this, but he still wasn’t going to waste any time.

He kept having to throw rocks at its attention and keep it invested in the chase. But that being said, there was only so far that he could get it to go, because he wasn’t going to kill it in their fighting arena. It’d just make a mess, and he didn’t want to get bitched at for that.

If he was to venture a guess, he’d say he was about most of the way there. So now was as good a time as any. He quickly climbed a tree, and waited for it to open its jaw. He then lept down and caught it with the edge of his pipe, and flipped it onto its back. From there he pummeled it until it was all said and done.

The biggest mistake he probably made was actually setting it to an hour, because that meant that the others had time to piss around while they hunted. Hopefully their hunger would remind them that there was a time limit for a reason.

Robin was already back there, with a rabbit in hand. Was that bait for something else, or was that really what she was bringing to the contest. Because if the rest of them brought back something, then she’d come in last, because they weren’t going to bring in something that small.

“There’s still lots of time to catch something else, y’know.”

“I think this will be plenty of meat for me. I haven’t quite got the appetites you boys have.”

“Alright, but you know you’re going to lose, right?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

It didn’t take too long for the others to come back, and they lined them all up. He didn’t come in third, but the fact that Luffy had managed to get the biggest kill today somehow made beating Sabo lose all its edge.

Luffy’s excitement for this didn’t even last that long, and that’s what made it even worse. Because it didn’t matter to him anymore and that was just the worst.

He’d steal some of Luffy’s meat when he wasn’t looking to make up for his lose.

Chapter Text

Using all of their combined effort, it had taken all too long for them to get Luffy’s hat back out of the clutches of danger. It was a task that would have taken easily half the time if Luffy hadn’t been thrown into a fit of hysterics and made it impossible to concentrate on the task at hand, ruining her focus and making hands almost impossible to sustain. Ace and Sabo were both scrambling to get it and at the same time keeping Luffy from throwing himself into danger to get it.

She had found it an impossible task to hold the rubber child in place as he screeched in panic and squirmed his way out of even the tightest grip she could manage to keep on him. That made the tricky task of getting a hat out of the jaws of a crocodile an impossible job. Even at his best, Luffy could not be reasoned with. It was ridiculous to think anything would chance now, especially when he was at this point and trying to throw himself into the beast’s mouth in order to get it, not really caring if that meant he accidentally got eaten in the process.

It seemed that she was never going to understand this boy, because the moment she was starting to figure him out, he immediately did something unreasonable even for him, and made her have to rethink everything completely. It seemed as though the other boys were on the same page as her as they went to retrieve the hat as she had been left in charge of restraining him now, as she had more arms than both of them, and even with her devil fruit it was tricky. The more effort she put in, he’d immediately put in ten times the effort and force her to do something else. This was all too much effort than needed to keep a boy from either getting eaten, or drowned.

At last, he calmed instantly when his hat had been returned to him. He went from a crazed panicked mess, to the mostly pleasant child that they had come to know. She couldn’t say that she knew him all that well, but considering the amount of time that they spent together in the past few days, the sudden change didn’t surprise her all that much. Luffy could change how he acted in the drop of a hat with little warning. The fact that his hat of all things did seem to be an unusual choice.

But that being said, she had also never seen the boy without it. Meaning it probably had some importance. Though she failed to see it as so important he’d die for it. She was about to ask, when an upset Ace and Sabo came forth, sopping wet and fuming. They had questions of their own, much less kind and calm than her own.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS ALL THAT ABOUT?”

“YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN YOURSEFL KILLED IDIOT!”

“It’s okay because I got my hat back see?” He beamed up with a chuckle, both hand clutching the sides of his hat and pulling down on it. Happy giggles spilled out of him as he did so.

“NO IT IS NOT OKAY!!” They both yelled in unison, both hitting him.

“Luffy, why is your hat so important that you’re willing to put yourself in danger to get it back? Your own wellbeing is surely more important, right?”

“Well it’s my treasure, so of course it’s really important to me. Because if I don’t keep it safe, then I can’t keep my promise and a man always keeps his promises.” He explain, with a tone that suggested that this was common knowledge and that there had to be something wrong with them for them not to get it.

“Who the hell did you make a promise to? I’m sure they’d say that it was stupid like we told you it was.” Ace said, wringing out his shirt to get some of the water out of it.

“I made it to Shanks before Grampa took me all the way out here and I met you guys. He said to bring this hat back to him when I become a great pirate just like him. So if I don’t have the hat then I can’t stay true to our promise.”

Shanks? As in the Red Haired Shanks? One of the Four Emperors of the Sea? One of the strongest men alive? And he made a promise with Luffy and gave him his hat? That seemed seriously unlikely, because what on earth would pirates that strong be doing over here and not out on the Grandline? Luffy was one of the worst liars she had ever seen, so the odds of him lying were extremely low, yet this story seemed completely unreasonable.

Not like anything about Luffy was.

“Well you can’t do the other half if you don’t survive, idiot!”

“Well it won’t matter if I don’t have his hat to give back to him!” And once again, Ace and Luffy started to butt heads. Sabo just seemed exasperated at this point, because no one’s point was going to get across to the other, and he knew it.

“Luffy, you know Red Haired Shanks?” This got the boy’s attention, and pulled back, letting Ace fall forward as he did so.

“You know Shanks too? He’s got so many really cool stories about how him and his crew go all kinds of cool places and they used to party all the time and have lots of fun everytime I’d come visit them at Party’s Bar and I used to really want to be part of their crew,” there was a small dip in his enthusiasm He rubbed his arm a little, but then his energy and excitement came back. “But now I wanna have my own crew so tough it’ll impress Shanks! So that’s why we made that promise! We’re gonna meet again on the Grandline one day.”

The dip was certainly odd, but she’d save that question for a different time. Most people typically didn’t like talking about that sort of thing in front of people, so she’d save it for a later time when it was only them.

“OH!! That’s also how I my scar. I was proving to them that I was tough so that’s how I got it.” He boasted proudly.

“So how did you get it?”

“I proved just how strong I was.”

“Yeah, but how did you get it. Did you fight some beast or something like that?”

“No, I stabbed myself in the face with a dagger and I didn’t even cry. I’m just that tough and I impressed everyone there and Shanks even bought me juice.” Luffy boasted, his lips curling inward a bit and his gaze drifting away on the part where he didn’t cry. It’d be rude and unneeded to point it out, so she’d keep her mouth shut.

“One: that’s the stupidest scar story I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and two: what kind of pirate drinks juice?”

“HEY I WAS ONLY SIX AND A HALF THEN. AND YOU DON’T HAVE ANY SCARS SO SHUT UP. AT LEAST I HAVE A SCAR STORY.”

“WELL I’M NOT GOING TO GET ANY SCARS BECAUSE I’M NEVER GONNA GET HURT BAD ENOUGH IN BATTLE TO GET ONE SO THERE!”

“BUT THEN YOU WON’T HAVE ANY COOL SCAR STORIES!”

“I’LL HAVE PLENTY OF COOL FIGHT STORIES.” And the two went back to butting heads. Sabo threw his arms up in the air, because they just finished doing this and they were already doing it again. It was like a punishment that never ended.

She bloomed an arm onto his shoulder to pat his head comfortingly. It was something the two would surely get tired of, so all they had to do was wait this out until they found a better way to disagree. Though for now it would be probably best to distract them in some way. This fighting was getting no one anywhere, so there was no point to it.

“How about we get looking for something for supper. I’m sure you boys are getting hungry.” And that was an easy enough thing to guess going off of how much they ate at meal times. This snapped both of them out of it.

“We could get some crocodiles! They’re right here after all!”

“Yeah, and they stole my hat like a bunch of bastards!” They seemed to all be in agreement, because the three then set off to the waterfront again to stir up some trouble to get their meal. She’d watch and let them do the work. They’d complain that she did it too fast, even if they did claim to be hungry before.

What odd boys they were indeed.

Chapter Text

It was about time for them to come back to the bandits’ hut. It was getting late and as much fun as they were having out in the forest, they had to go back. The boys had gone out and brought back up more game for the rest of them. It was truly amazing what they could take down when they mostly worked together. There was still a lot of room left for improvement, but that was fair, seeing as this was only their first day working together. It was also obvious to see Sabo and Ace had been working together for a while now. She had gathered that much watching them earlier.

But watching them carry the kill up to the hut, the fact that they were already working so well together spoke volumes to what was no doubt possible for these boys. Needless to say, she was interested to see just how these boys were going to turn out. She had to wonder if the world would even be ready for when they no doubt took the world by storm. There was no doubt that they would end up on the sea someday as great pirates. And to think that the three of them hailed from the so called weakest blue.

She was put on edge when she saw that there was someone that she didn’t recognize at the hideout. She hadn’t had a lot of time to recognize the faces, but seeing as she stuck out considerably from the mannerism of the bandits, it was hard to ignore. That and she was one of two women up there. She also looked a fair bit more fragile than anyone up there, and she had with her a basket.

There was a good chance that she had managed to bribe her way up there with booze, considering a good portion of them were sitting around the table with a bunch of bottles of what appeared to be sake. She was positive that she could see Dadan sitting at the table with them and the comparatively tiny woman next to her.

Perhaps this was not a bribe to let her come up, but rather a gift for a friend, or perhaps a lover? She wasn’t sure for how she should approach this. She had two options here. She could follow the boys over and investigate that way, or keep her distance and listen with an ear perhaps under the table. Normally she’d chose the former, but she also had to worry about the fact that Luffy could accidentally give her away. While the boy had caused her to care a lot for him, that wasn’t to say she loved every aspect of him.

There was the fact that she was under the Vice Admiral’s protection now, but that was still no reason for her to fully relax. The government was never one to overlook an excuse to ignore one of their member’s promises. Garp may have been true to his word, but if word got out that Nico Robin was living on these islands, then that would be the end of it. She would have to run and leave the life she had here behind. And she had a feeling that it would not be a long life if she had a Vice Admiral actively looking for her.

Before she could fully finish weighing the pros and cons of this situation, Luffy bolted ahead in excitement, ditching his spot in the middle of the beast and ran ahead to greet their new guest. The other boys grunted in dissatisfaction as they were forced to hold all of the meat, as opposed to it being balanced between the three of them. But as Luffy was Luffy, he didn’t seem to mind as he instead kept running and doing as he pleased.

“Makino!!” He yelled with the enthusiasm he had for most things he liked. The woman stood and went around the table, stumbling back as she caught the boy. She couldn’t hear any of what she said, as the boy’s excited laughs did a good job of covering it. It seemed friendly enough. So she probably didn’t need to worry. At least about Luffy.

Had it not been the casual dropping of her name like that, she would have assumed her to be Luffy’s mother. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. Perhaps she recently adopted him? That seemed unlikely due to the living arrangements. Perhaps she was a merchant and was out at sea when she arrived yesterday? Children of merchants didn’t usually seem to hold pirates in such high esteem as these boys did. And Merchants didn’t usually end up in relationships with bandits either.

It seemed as though there wasn’t much else to do other than to go over there herself. Because it was only a matter of time before Luffy pointed them out. And she also didn’t want to have to worry about Luffy ending up with an entire search party looking for her.

Pointing them out would be subtle, it would seem, because soon he was full on dragging her over to them to introduce them all. He seemed thrilled about all this, and escape was no longer a viable option.

“And these are my friends Sabo, Ace, and Robin. They’re all really strong. Robin’s almost grandpa strong. We’re gonna become pirates one day and I’m gonna be the captain and we’re going to find the One Piece and then I can pay off my tab at the bar I promise.”

“That’s why you wanna find the One Piece? To pay off some tab?” Ace questioned, not even bothering to hide his disgust.

“No! I wanna be the king of the pirates so I can be the freest man alive! I don’t care about some dumb treasure so I’ll use some of my money to pay of my tab!”

Most wanted the title for one of three things, riches, power, or glory. It shouldn’t shock her that Luffy wasn’t most people. He really was one to play by his own rules. He truly was an interesting character. Makino chuckled a bit at his answer, but it wasn’t a mocking one. It seemed as she two enjoyed the new prospective on the matter.

“Well you’re going to have to get a hell of a lot stronger, idiot. You’re never gonna pay off your tab at this rate. I’m sure as hell not going to pay it off for you. Especially since I’m going to be the captain. An idiot like you has no place being captain.”

“I thought we were all on the same page and that I was going to be captain.”

“I thought you were gonna be the navigator.”

And the boys went on to bicker in circles about who would be captain of their boatless crew. Makino chuckled again.

“I’m so glad that Luffy has friends his age to play with now.” She mused to herself, before turning to greet her properly.

“Oh, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself. I’m Makino. I run a bar down in Windmill Village. You’re Robin right?”

“That would be me, pleasure to meet you. So you’re a friend of Luffy’s?” Now would be as good a time as ever to get some information from her.

“Yes, I was also one of his guardians before he moved up here a few months back. He’d come and eat at my bar and talk to my guests most of the days, and when he wasn’t he’d be out training with his grandfather for weeks at a time.”

“So he never went out and played with other children or brought them in with him?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Luffy has always been one to play a bit rough. It’s never in any mean way, he just gets too into the game and someone usually gets hurt. So parents stopped letting their children play with him. He’s never been too great at managing his strength. Even before he ate the gum gum fruit, he’s had a hard time knowing what a normal human should be able to handle.” She supposed that that came with the fact that he had probably already been through a lot of training from his grandfather at that point.

She couldn’t help but think back to last night when she overheard that conversation that they had though happened when everyone else was asleep. How often was Luffy alone before then?

“Well, I don’t think he’ll have any problems with this group. They’re a tough bunch. I supposed you have to when you live somewhere like this. So you shouldn’t have to worry about him here.”

“I’m glad. Everyone in the village was worried about him. I’ll be sure to let them know when I get back.”

“I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear it.”

“HEY, YOU GUYS GONNA COME EAT OR NOT? BECAUSE I’LL HAVE YOUR PIECE.” Luffy yelled over. Looking down where the boys were, it seemed as though they had put aside their differences and brought the food up to where it was supposed to go. It was far from done being cooked yet, but it didn’t seem like it mattered to the boy.

“I guess we had better get over there before there’s nothing left, huh.”

“I guess so.”

Chapter Text

Come night fall, everything was calming down. For the most part anyways. The boys seemed to have just as much energy as ever. They were a wild bunch, but they would surely tire themselves out soon enough. It was by no means a slow day, and it probably wasn’t for those boys either.

She’d sit back with a book and let those boys run off the last of their energy as they ran around the top area as they ran from fake marines that came to chase them down. She had no real interest in playing a game that she had lived first hand, but she supposed escaping marine was a big part of pirate life, and was thus a skill they needed to practice, and an important part of practicing being pirates. She wouldn’t say a word about how their practicing was more playing than anything. That would only ruin their fun. She’d let these kids be kids, and she would sit here and enjoy her book.

It wasn’t a fiction novel, but rather a book detailing what information there was on the Grandline. How she had gotten it was perhaps more than illegal, but her quest for knowledge was already viewed as such, so why stop now. While she had already been there, it was in her best interest to keep up to date with all the information available, so when the time came for her to return to the sea, she’d be well versed in what could keep her alive. Most notably where the best spots to avoid were, and to see if there was any correlation to poneglyph locations. If that was the case, she’d have to head there regardless. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy knowing the World Government.

That wouldn’t deter her though. If she didn’t keep at this, then all of Ohara would have died in vain. She was going to find the truth and there was no way around that. And to her knowledge, she was the only one out there who was even able to do it. If she didn’t, the truth would be lost forever and all that hard work would have been for nothing.

While she knew all of this stuff that they kept in the beginning few pages, it wouldn’t hurt to refresh her memory. There was also the off chance that they slipped in some information that was new and important. She couldn’t risk something like that.

Before she could even read the first word on the page, there was three children sitting at her feet, all waiting attentively.

“What’cha reading?”

“Oh, a book from a marine ship on the Grandline. It’s not exactly a story book.”

“Yeah! Story time!” Luffy yelled. She could see where this was going. But it was also a great way to get the children to get to sleep at a decent time.

“Alright, but first you boys have to get ready for bed, or no story.”

“But what if you just read us a story.” Luffy bargained as the other boys groaned in annoyance.

“We’ll see after you go and brush your teeth.” Luffy’s face lit up, and then settled into a sulk, and he and his brothers went off to get ready for bed. She could get her stuff ready after the boys have been settled in for the night. She’d go up and get settled in the room they were settled in the night before.

It didn’t take too much time for the boys to come back in. It seemed more like a race to get into the room. It seemed odd, especially when the thing they were so excited for her to read to them was a book of facts. It seemed odd to her, but it was important information to them as well. They did have dreams of being pirates and finding the One Piece after all.

She gave them a moment for them to get settled in before she cleared her throat and started to read.

“To the north and-“ She was cut off by snoring. It seemed as though it didn’t take too long for Luffy to fall asleep, as four words in, he was sound asleep and snoring. She chuckled a bit, blooming arms to tuck him in and give him a little pat. And then she continued.

 “To the north and south of the Grand Line are strips of ocean known as the ‘Calm Belts’. The true entrance to Grand Line is usually marred by storms; the waters of the Calm Belts remain static year round, and there are virtually no winds or waves, this makes it difficult to cross without propulsion. Extremely large sea monsters called Sea King live in the Calm Belts; in fact, the monsters found in the Calm Belts are the largest seen thus far in all of the known world. The combination of no currents, no wind, and the presence of the Sea Kings makes these belts perfect barriers to any traveler trying to directly go into the Grand Line.”

Glancing down, she could see that Ace too had fallen asleep. He was given the same treatment as Luffy, and he was laid down, and tucked in. A gentle pat was given before the arm disappeared. Looking over at Sabo, he didn’t see too far off.

“You know, we can continue this some other time. This book isn’t going anywhere.” It was also getting late, but that was beside the point.

“No no, I wanna keep listening. This is going to be really important to know when we set out to sea. There’s a lot more stuff to know than just how to steer a boat and stuff. The Grandline is full of all sorts of stuff that’s not in any of the seas at all, right?” He said with the slightest hint of a stifled yawn.

“Well it’s certainly not the West Blue. It certainly is a strange place to say the least. It has that certain level of danger where you never quite know what might gobble you up.” She joked, but at the same time being entirely factual. Because the Grandline was a very dangerous place.

“So you’re from all the way in the West Blue? What was your town like?” He suddenly went from near asleep, to wide awake. It seemed fair knowing that the boys probably didn’t get to talk to many outside of their island, like a lot of islands deep in blues like this one was.

“Don’t worry about it, there’s not that much to tell.”

“You do know that I can wait this out, or worse yet, wake up Luffy and Ace and then there’d really be hell to pay.” He was a persistent boy to say the least. Though all of these boys were all very different, they were also very much so the same. She knew that even if she didn’t give them what they wanted to know, that they’d find another way to get what they wanted. These boys were most certainly going to raise a lot of hell when they were older. There was no point in really resisting here. She was somewhere safe, and she could still just as easily flee if things started to go south again.

“Well, there was a big tree in the middle, and inside that tree, was a library of all the knowledge gathered from around the world. All the greatest scholars and archaeologists would come and study in this great library. It was really quite a sight.” There came a sadness and longing that came with the memories. The smiling faces of all the archaeologists as they welcomed her into their midst. But that just furthered her resolve to continue their work. Sabo seemed enthralled by the idea of this great knowledge.

“So there’s really a place with all that information, all in one place like that?” It pained her to have to shut him down like this, but there was really no other choice. It’d be worse to lead him on.

“No. We stumbled upon knowledge that no one was meant to find. Information made forbidden by the World Government. So they stopped us the only way they know how. They destroyed all the hard work that was put into the library, and got rid of all the citizens and scholars the same way they got rid “of the books.”

“But what about you? If you lived there, that’d make you a citizen, right?”

“It’s getting late. I think that you should get to bed. I think it’s about time we turn in.”

“But Robin-“ Without another word, she blew out the candle she had been using to light the room. She didn’t so much as want to sleep, as she no longer wanted to speak of the topic. She was sure this would be brought up at a different time, but for now she wanted to dwell on it no longer.

She could still tuck Sabo in, despite the protests he gave. She gave him a little pat as the arm disappeared.

“Goodnight, Sabo.”

Chapter Text

It felt like today would be the day for sure. They had already hunted for the morning, and they weren’t planning on doing their sparing until later in the afternoon. Sabo and Ace had already went off to do who knows what, so that meant he had plenty of time to practice on his own and get really good before they came back for training. They were going to be so shocked and impressed when his punches were actually landing now, and they weren’t the only ones that were getting hits in.

The bandits had plenty of stuff lying around that he could use to mark a target on a tree with paint. It didn’t matter to him if they wanted to or not, because this was important pirate business, and they were bandits, so they wouldn’t understand. And it was perfect for targets too. It was bright, and red, and it was perfect to put on trees so he’d have a good spot to hit.

He didn’t have a paint brush or anything like that to put it on the tree, but he did have two hands he could use to just smear it on there. It wasn’t like it had to look nice for anyone, because he didn’t care. It also didn’t matter that he now had two bright red hands from using them to smear it on the tree to make his target circles. It just made it look like he had a pair of really cool boxing gloves on his hands, and that just meant that he was gonna punch better.

It wouldn’t be as good as actual boxing gloves, but they looked a lot like ‘em and that was all that mattered. It wasn’t like the trees knew what punching gloves looked like. All that they knew was that they were gonna get punched. And they probably didn’t actually know that much but were pretending like they did. Trees were so dumb. They didn’t even know they were gonna get all punched. Because he was going to hit one for sure this time. He wasn’t going to punch himself in the face this time.

He quickly went back and put the paint back where he found it. He didn’t need it anymore, and it was just gonna get in his way, and it’d also mean that he’d have to go get new pants if he tripped over it and spilled paint all over his pants. And that’d really suck because then he’d be stuck in boring stores and it’d really suck if he ended up stuck there for hours when he could be doing fun stuff. Dadan would probably take him to like a million stores and make him try on a million pants. Cause she was the one in charge of him technically, and that’s how it was when he lived in Windmill with Makino, because Gramps was out too much of the time to make him do boring stuff.

But now he was thinking about all this boring stuff too much and it was giving him a headache. He had better things to do than to stand around and think about how much he hated doing stupid boring stuff like clothes shopping. There were trees to punch, and there was no way that he was just gonna let them stay unpunched like this. It’d be just like before he ate the Gum Gum Fruit and Gramps left him to train in the jungle, except that there are other people there, and he can still hear them doing their boring adult or boring bandit stuff a little ways away.

He rolled his shoulder a bit to make sure that the punch would be good and strong when he threw it, because he’d be all nice and warmed up. He wasn’t exactly sure if he could warm up, because he was made of rubber, but he’d keep doing it anyways. He was pretty sure that when he threw it, it’d just make his punch like really really fast, so that’d help some. The faster the punch the stronger it was. Just like how the stronger you were the stronger the punch. It’d be like cheating a bit to catch up to Ace and Sabo and maybe Robin, but it was just like Ace said. When you’re out at sea, they’re not gonna fight fair and it was okay to fight as dirty as you wanted, as long as you didn’t get ‘em in the jewels.  That was just too far.

But that being said, there were no jewels on a tree. He probably drew the target on high enough, and it wasn’t like everyone was the same height. So that meant that it didn’t matter where he put the target on the tree. He just needed to aim good. If he did that, then there’d be no problem at all. It was all just a matter of learning how to aim with this stupid rubber arms.

Now that his shoulders felt good and warmed up, he just fixed his stance real quick. His feet had to be shoulder width apart, and his knees bent a little. Oh! And one had to be more in front of the other so you could put more power into your punches cause it wasn’t just your arms anymore, it was your whole body punching now. Right now, it more importantly his fist bounced off the tree, he wouldn’t fall on his butt cause he’d have a foot to lean back on.

That’s what Grandpa had told him anyways. At least he was pretty sure there was no one around to see right now, because was probably gonna happen a lot. It was really hard to get a good hit when your arms started to do their own thing and you punched yourself. It really sucked. Like a lot.

If he just focused on hitting it right in the middle, he should be able to do it easy peasy. This was practically baby stuff, so he had it in the bag.

So he threw a punch as hard as he could. He made sure not to close his eyes so he could see where he hit the tree. He instead ended up punching the ground in front of the tree, then the bottom of the tree, and then himself right in the gut. He couldn’t say it hurt, but it sure did knock the wind out of him. His stance didn’t keep him from falling on his butt at all. Grandpa was a liar.

He sulked about the failed result, but then came to realize something incredibly important. He had gotten better since his fight with Ace. That punch still hit the ground, but it hit the tree too! It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but he could twist it into a win for himself. And it was also a lot straighter than the ones he threw before, cause it went forwards like a lot more.

He’d try again, and try and throw his fist more up when he did so. He had lots of time until Ace and Sabo were supposed to get back, so he had lots of time to practice and surprise them. He rolled his shoulders again, and this time tried his best to aim up as he punched.

And up it did go.

All the way up into a branch and then got caught in it. Since it got caught, and he didn’t way enough to keep it down, he was then launched into a tree. It wasn’t what he wanted at all, but there was nothing he could really do to stop it. Apart from dangle there and sulk, that is.

But his sulking was not long, as hands nudged the part that got caught out and he fell from the tree.

Even if there weren’t arms at the bottom that cushioned his fall, he still would’ve been fine. It was one of the perks of being a rubber man, after all.

“Thanks Robin. My hand got stuck in the tree while I was trying to punch it.”

“Why were you trying to punch it?” She asked. He had a feeling that she already knew why he was, but he was still going to tell her anyways. She wanted him to tell her, so he’d tell her. He wasn’t rude.

“I’m practicing cause now that I’m rubber, all my punches are dumb and miss. So I gotta practice and its not like the tree cares or anything. Cause trees are dumb.”

This got a chuckle from her, and arms bloomed on his back. They had him by the shoulder and the armpit, and he kinda wished it wasn’t the armpit because that kinda tickled.

“Now how about I give you a hand? I find it helps to have someone there to watch to see where you go wrong.” Her arms were there, so he couldn’t see the harm in letting her help him.

“Okay!”

Chapter Text

Ace and Sabo had sat themselves down at the other end of the breakfast table. They were all the way on their own and were talking about things that he wasn’t allowed to hear about for some dumb reason. He had tried to hear, but they kept moving away when he tried to sit close to them. And that was really rude because it wasn’t like they were still eating, cause all the bandits were busy cleaning up the food crumbs and the bones now, so it was just them.

Defeated, he sat next to Robin, and stared at them angrily. It didn’t do much to stop them from being total buttheads that wouldn’t let him sit next to them so he could be in on their secret too, but it did help him deal with it a little. It also helped by calling them buttheads in his head. Maybe out loud too, he hadn’t checked yet if that worked too.

“Hey Ace and Sabo! You guys are a bunch of buttheads!” It felt good to say it and have it be known to all. Because that’s what they were being. He had to say he felt proud saying it out loud, and even prouder that it had gotten Ace and Sabo to stop talking to each other for a little bit.

They quickly went back to talking, but he still got them to stop and acknowledge him for at least a little bit there, so he had earned his smugness. Robin gave him a light little bap.

“Don’t be rude, Luffy.” Now he was being scolded because of them, this was even worse! He was definitely gonna kick their butts for real later!

“They started it by being buttheads!” Hopefully now she’d see it his way, because before she just must not’ve seen them being jerks all the way over there. Because they were pretty far away from where they were, and she was busy helping with the clean up by using her devil fruit powers. She also must not’ve seen him basically chase them around the room because they weren’t letting him sit with them so they could tell secrets to each other and be jerks! Big smelly secret having jerks!

He got a pat in return.

“It still doesn’t mean you have to say mean things about them. What if they were planning a surprise for you and didn’t want you to ruin it by finding out about it?” He had never thought of that. That was most certainly a thing that could happen. They were tricky but he was really good at finding things out. That was probably why he was kicked from their side of the table.

“That makes sense.” He nodded in agreement. He couldn’t wait to see what kind of surprise it was. Maybe they were gonna make him captain, or bring him meat. Maybe it was something even cooler than that! Maybe they built a boat in all those times that they’d go off to do their own thing! It’d be so cool if they had their own boat! Then they could leave at any time they wanted and be pirates and go exploring for real and not just around the island and stuff.

That was real nice of them to build a boat on their own. It was probably gonna be really cool. But they still needed a Jolly Roger and to figure out who was going to be their captain. Because they wouldn’t really be good pirates if they didn’t figure that much out. They also needed a musician. That was probably the most important thing right now. He could probably go down to Grey Terminal and find someone who knew how to play music. That would be a good next step.

“Hey Robin, do you remember how to get back down to Grey Terminal? We need to find a good musician for when Sabo and Ace tell us about the boat that they built. Don’t tell ‘em I know though. They’re doing their best to keep it a secret.”

“Why do we need to find a musician?”

“Only because it’s the most important part of being a pirate, and if they have the boat ready, that means that we can leave at any time now. I mean we still gotta make our flag and decide who’s gonna be captain, but other than that we’re ready!”

Robin chuckled a bit, and gave him a light pat on the head.

“I’m sure our musician problem will solve itself in due time.” He was gonna have to check everyone in Grey Terminal, and then maybe even whatever the name of the town was that was next to it. Boy were they gonna be shocked when he found a musician for them without them even needing to bring it up.

“Hey. Luffy. We were considering letting you and Robin come with us when we go to town later.”

Town sounded like he was gonna have to get clothes, and that sounded like it was boring. Here he thought it was gonna be something cool.

“Yeah, there’s a bunch of cool restaurants, and we were even considering letting you guys in on our treasure competition.”

He was back in it when food was brought up. He was always down for food.

“Well why didn’t you start with food. I would’ve been interested from the start if you had said that in the first place! Let’s go right now!” He was up on his feet, and would have run out the door had it not been for Ace grabbing him by the shoulder and dragging him back down onto his butt.

“We weren’t done. So sit down and keep listening.” Now that was just rude. And to think he was gonna go find them a musician later. Not anymore he wasn’t. They could thank Ace for being a jerk.

“Now we’re gonna see who can get the most cash by the end of the day. Anything’s allowed, so long as you don’t get caught. It’s not worth stealing from us, because all our money’s gonna go in the same pile for our boat fund. And we’re gonna need more money now, because we need a boat big enough for at least four people right from the get go.”

He could totally do this. It was gonna be easy cause he was really good at being sneaky. They wouldn’t even know they were being robbed! Ace and Sabo were going to be so impressed by all the money he got.

“Luffy I want you to stay with one of us so you can learn how it’s done. We’re not gonna spend the day following after you to keep you out of trouble. It’s hard enough to avoid trouble as it is without having to worry about someone getting their ass beat across town.”

“It’ll probably be the three of us on one team, and Robin on the other. That way Luffy can’t mess everything up and we can still make profit.”

“That sounds boring. I can steal all by myself!”

“This is why I said he wasn’t ready. Because he’d pull something stupid like this.”

“Wait… What do you mean I’m not ready?”

“Because, if you’re gonna run around and be a kid, we’re not going to make any profit, and we’re going to end up just wasting our time. So if you’re gonna be a pain, you’re better off just staying home.” That was so rude of Ace to say! He just couldn’t believe it. He was too ready. He was the best stealer and he was so gonna show them.

“I’m not gonna run around and be a kid! I can totally steal with you guys!”

Ace and Sabo traded unsure looks, and that was really unfair because it wasn’t like there was any animals to get eaten by or water to fall in. He could totally handle being in town.

“Alright, you can still come with us. But only if you stay with either me and Ace, or Robin while we’re out. Otherwise…” Sabo trailed off a bit, as he was trying to remember something. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to see how good you are at stealing.”

That was a really good point. He couldn’t believe he didn’t think of that. And to think he just thought that they thought that he was incompetent. He’d show them just how good at stealing he really was!

“Okay! I’ll be sure to stay close so you guys can see just how good I am at that stuff!”

He was pretty sure that the look that Ace gave Sabo was the best Ace face he had seen yet. But that was beside the point. It was time for them to go steal!

Chapter Text

This was gonna be his first actual trip to town. It was gonna be so great! He was gonna get to see all kinds of new stuff, and show off all kinds of new skills. He wasn’t actually sure if he had stolen anything before. The people in Windmill were really nice and gave him all kinds of free stuff all the time, so he couldn’t really remember much else other than people giving him stuff in Windmill.

But people that lived in towns were always really nice. He was sure that a lot of ‘em would just let him steal from them. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but it might’ve been because stealing was basically just people giving you stuff, but it took more work and they didn’t always know you were doing it, and if they did they got real mad. But he was gonna be sneaky, so they didn’t have to know that he took their money. He’d let them keep their treasures, because treasures were a special exception in his eyes. He’d be really mad if someone stole his hat, and he didn’t want anyone to suffer like that, because that’d suck a lot.

Man the path down to Grey Terminal was a lot more boring when there wasn’t someone actively trying to stop him. Like a lot easier. And a lot faster too. This was just ridiculous. They had just passed his personal best for like a month like it was nothing. Ace was really good at stopping him. Actually if it wasn’t for the fact that they were gonna go do something, he was almost tempted to ask Ace to try and stop him like he used to. Because minus the almost dying a few times, it was pretty fun and it’s not like it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

But soon they got to Grey Terminal. It was still pretty cool to see, even if he was drug there against his will one of the two times he was there. But right now that didn’t matter. Because it was stealing time so it was time to start grabbing stuff. This is where rubber arms actually came in handy. He was holding so much stuff right now it was insane. It was like at least three people’s worth or trash and he was carrying it all on his own.

“Luffy, what are you doing?”

“Winning!”

“At what, carrying the most garbage? There’s nothing out here other than rich people garbage. It’s not worth putting in the time to make this junk sellable when you can just bust in and steal directly from them. Put that stuff down and come one. There’s probably someone who could actually use that trash for something anyways.” Sabo explained, helping Luffy put all that stuff down before directing him towards the wall.

He wasn’t exactly sure how he had missed it the first time, because that might’ve been the biggest wall he had ever seen in his life. How did they hide it so well behind the garbage? Just looking at it made him wonder just how small Windmill was compared to this place, because it looked like it could hold like a billion and he wasn’t even in there yet! Who knew towns even came in that big!

“You just gonna stare, or can we get moving. We don’t have that big a window anyways.” Ace huffed, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling. His arm stretched a bit, but he started walking again. Ace was right! What was he doing just standing around like this when he could go in and see just how big this town was. And if he could see the other end of it, then it really was as big as windmill, but if he couldn’t then it probably was as big as he thought it was.

He made an attempt to run ahead, but he was instead pulled back by Ace. He just couldn’t seem to make up his mind, could he? He wanted him to hurry up, so he was, and now that he was he was being pulled back? This seemed more like a them problem, because they couldn’t hurry up like he was.

“You’re supposed to stay with us, idiot. You don’t even know how to get in and you’re gonna make us all suspicious because you’re gonna draw attention to us. This is exactly why I said you weren’t ready yet. You’re such an amateur.”

“Well you’re both gonna get us caught if you both don’t chill out. We’re getting closer to the gate, so both of you shut up. We’re just gonna sneak in when they come and dump out the garbage. They won’t even notice us coming in. Then we’re basically free to do as we please.” Sabo explained. It was really worth getting Ace in trouble too in his professional opinion. He looked so sour about it too. It was just too funny! He couldn’t help but let out a few “shishishi”s as he looked at Ace’s face. It got him a punch in the shoulder but it was worth it.

It didn’t take too much longer for them to be over by the gates. They were careful not to stand too close, but not too far away. Robin helped him a bit as they hopped onto the side of the cart as it hauled the garbage in and out of the walls. It was big enough so that they could stay on it unnoticed. It was a really clever trick, he had to hand it to Ace and Sabo for coming up with this trick. They were smart, even if they didn’t get that ship built like he thought they did.

Once the cart had passed the walls, they all hopped off and quickly moved out of the way as not to draw attention to themselves. Robin crouched down so she could properly be in the huddle that they were forming.

“Alright. The goal is to get as much money as possible in two hours. Then we’ll meet up here, then go find somewhere for lunch.”

“We’ll dine and dash so we’re still making money.”

“We’ll take Luffy with us, and you go do your own thing. You got a bounty and were really good at taking down those pirates before, so you probably already know how to steal.”

“That’s presumptuous but in this case you are correct.”

“Alright, ready? Break.” And then they broke their huddle, wandering off in their own directions.

They walked for a bit off in one direction, before stopping on a fairly busy street with a bunch of people on it. They stopped, staying close together as not to lose anyone in the madness.

“Alright, now watch and learn.” Ace clearned his throat a little, before patting down his pant pockets.

“Aw man! Someone stole my wallet! I can’t believe someone would do that!” He was shocked, because not only did he not know that Ace had a wallet, but in the time since they got there, someone had stolen it. That was like the opposite of what they were here to do. How does something like that even happen?

Sabo elbowed him in the side, before gesturing slightly with his head as people checked to see if they still had theirs. He was about to say something, when he was elbowed again. He was given the shush gesture as he gestured for him to follow him.

Naturally he did, because Sabo knew what he was doing all of the time, so he’d show him how it was done. Even though he probably already knew how it was done, he’d let Sabo show him, just in case.

It seemed as though there was a lot to learn, because he hadn’t even seen Sabo grab any wallets. He just saw him bump into a bunch of people, apologizing as he did so. And yet he came back with a bunch of wallets. He pulled Luffy into the corner, and he took all the money out of them. He then handed him a wallet.

“Now go to a store, and say you found a wallet on the ground. Then come back here and I’ll give you another and you give it to a different store. Make sure they’re different or they’re gonna get suspicious of all the wallets you found in such short a time.”

“Okay.” Man, Sabo really knew what he was doing. It was a really tedious task, but Ace joined in and helped out, and they covered a lot of ground way faster. It was so smart. They met back up in the alley way once all the wallets were given to different stores.

“How much you wanna bet that Robin’s got more money than us now.”

“All of the berries we have. She’s got a sneaky devil fruit and she’s done this before. Let’s just cut our losses and just go get some food. It’s their treat.”

Chapter Text

It was really a great day for being outside. It was nice and sunshiney, and there wasn’t even a single cloud in the sky. The bandits were off banditing and the ones that weren’t were doing chores that they were supposed to be doing, but chores are stupid so they weren’t. But there was only one problem with all this.

There was nothing to do. He didn’t wanna train right now, because Ace and Sabo were up there with him. And if they saw him train then the surprise would be ruined when one day he just ended up punching Ace for real. It wouldn’t be as great if they knew he was training hard to be able to do it. Then he couldn’t brag about how he got this strong almost all on his own with only a little help from Robin.

They had to take some time off from stealing for a bit, because if you stole too much too often, then it was just impossible for them to do anything. They had made a bunch of money in the past few days, and they had really taken advantage of the nice weather. There was a bunch of people out in the shops, and he had seen them there so he knew. They probably were still there since it was so nice out. But Sabo and Ace insisted that they stay here and just waste a beautiful day like this. And it was really stupid and he hated it.

He basically threw himself backwards onto the grass, scowling up at the sky, as if doing that would give him something fun to do. But the sky kept doing its own thing, completely unbothered by his boredom. It was pretty rude of it to just be this nice and not let him do anything. Maybe if he focused hard enough it’d rain. So his scowl changed to a scrunched up look of concentration. There was no way that this plan was going to fail, and then he’d have a reason to be bored.

But his concentration faltered when a net was dropped on his tummy. It snapped him out of it, and made him sit up, making the net fall onto his lap. First he had to pick up the new thing on his lap, because why, but also how? Because he was focusing so hard on making it rain, his first thought was to look up. Because maybe he had accidentally willed it too hard and the weather didn’t know what to do with itself and just started raining nets instead of water. That’d just be stupid, because you can’t even drink nets. What would the point of net rain even be other than to be dumb?

It turned out that he didn’t will it to rain down nets, but instead Ace and Sabo were standing next to him. It was a little disappointing in all honesty, but at the same time he was a little relieved. He wasn’t ready for the kind of power that came with being able to make it rain nets. It wouldn’t really do much of anything, because they’d probably just be hitting stuff with the stick part and not actually catching stuff cause the net part’s too small.

“So you done being weird in the grass? We got plans for today and I don’t feel like waiting for you to be done doing whatever it was you were doing.”

“I was trying to make it rain cause I was bored. Why do we have nets? What’re we gonna do with these?” He had like a million questions, because that was only normal when you were just handed a net out of nowhere.

“We’re gonna go out into the forest, and we’re gonna find Hercules and Atlas beetles. And then we’re gonna put them on that stump the bandits use to chop wood, and we’re gonna make them fight.”

That was probably the best idea he had heard in his life. Bugs were all cool, but he had no idea that fighting them was an option. That was probably like a million time cooler than just looking at ‘em. He was immediately on his feet, because he wanted to play with bugs. He wanted to play with bugs so much that there weren’t even enough words for it.

“Let’s go get ‘em right now what are we waiting for they’re just out there in the woods right lets stop wasting time and go get ‘em!” There was no time to breathe or punctuate. Now was the time for catching bugs not talking.

He was stopped by his shoulder again before he could run off into the forest to go look. It seemed unfair because he could totally go off and find more bugs than them right then and there but he had to stop for some reason. It wasn’t like stealing he’s caught plenty of bugs. Even if they were three years older that didn’t mean that he wasn’t just as good at bug catching. The Gum Gum fruit didn’t mess up that part of him.

“Do you even know what those beetles look like? Because it’s only those kinds of beetle that do it.”

He opened his mouth the protest, but then he closed it again because he didn’t actually know what they looked like. So Sabo had a point here. Even though he would’ve really impressed if he did come back with both the guys they were looking for.

“Besides, this part isn’t the part where we’re competing. We’re gonna find our beetles in the woods, and then we’re going to pick and see who wins.” That seemed fair enough, but he still wanted to find the guys. That way it’d be like the guy he caught all on his own won. It made it a lot more fun to him.

So they ventured off into the forest. It was tricky, because he had no idea what they were looking for other than a beetle. So he was looking for black and shiny things in the bushes and stuff and under rocks. He was sure to stay close though, because if he found something, he wanted them to see it. Ace was the first one to find one.

And it was so much cooler than he thought it would be? He didn’t know bugs came in that big. He could easily hold it in his hands and not accidentally squish it. Ace was even showing off that it could be done by doing it himself.

“So that’s the guys we’re looking for?!”

“Yep except the other guy we need’s got a horn that’s different. But he’ll still be just as big as this guy. Just one more then we can go back and fight ‘em.” This was honestly the most exciting thing ever. Who knew that there were bugs that could fight each other, and they weren’t even from the Grandline where all the extra cool stuff came from!

This meant that he kinda had a more clear idea on what he was looking for. A big beetle with a cool horn. That was something he could do for sure.

Except he wasn’t the one to find it. Sabo did. He was however, the one to catch it. Sabo let him catch it all on his own. He didn’t even need the net. He just grabbed it with his bare hands.

They all ran back up to the hut, because no one wanted to wait anymore. This was all too exciting to just walk up there like there was nothing else to do. Because now they had bugs to fight, and he had no idea how bugs fought at all. This was going to be so exciting!

They crowded around the stump, and they held the bugs in their hands. There was important business to get out of the way real quick before they did anything else.

“Mine and Sabo’s bug’s gonna win.” He boasted, holding up his bug triumphantly.

“Well you’re wrong, because mine’s gonna win. Right Sabo.” Ace turned to him. He was met with Sabo placing a hand on his shoulder, with a smug look.

“Actually. I think that mine and Luffy’s is going to win.”

“You traitor!”

“He’s just on the winning side!”

“Well why don’t you both put your beetle where your mouths are and we’ll settle this like men.”

The three of them nodded, before putting the bugs down on the stump. This was so exciting. Finally he’d get to see bugs fight. He’d wanted to see this ever since he found out it was a thing.

The match started as the bugs both locked horns. It was already intense, because he didn’t know what was going to happen. They both started to teeter, both losing their balance a little as it looked like they were trying to flip each other over.

But at the match came to a dramatic close as their bug flipped Ace’s over. He threw his arms up in the air in defeat while he and Sabo cheered on their bug. This was probably the best thing he had even seen. Ace picked up his beetle again.

“Double or nothing?”

“You’re on.”

Chapter Text

It was a nice and quiet day. Given the company that she kept, that was fairly unusual. That being said, her idea of a nice day was different than most. It was raining out, but there was still enough light to be able to comfortably be able to read the book in front of her. It seemed the calm of rain had brought peace to their home for once, and she’d enjoy the quiet for once.

She sat at the end of the table, she had a good distance from the fire pit as to be just warm enough not to be too uncomfortable. The boys were on the other end, discussing things that were muted by the distance and other conversations around. It had gotten to the point where she didn’t feel the need to listen to every conversation, and could instead just enjoy the book that was in her hands. It was a nice feeling. It was really made all the better when she could sit there and realize that she had found people that wanted her around.

Even the bandits who had been afraid of her had been warming up to her. They’d greet her with the same attitudes as they’d great one of their own. It was far from anything polite, but given the nature and what she had seen from other interactions, it simply was how friendly was done around here. Truly a curious way to do things, but it had its own charm. She wondered if they knew just how common the same brash attitude that they had was among pirates.  She wondered if Luffy knew.

It was an amusing thought to say the least. She never fully understood what Luffy had against mountain bandits, but he made sure he made his standings known to all, praising pirates and cursing mountain bandit. Yet he seemed perfectly content with living in their home. She supposed applying reason to Luffy would get her nowhere. It never had before, and it certainly wasn’t going to be now.

But with those comforting thoughts in mind, she properly settled in with her book. Today it’d be a fiction book. Though she did need to keep up to date with all the newest information that was on hand with this sort of thing, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t indulge in some stories for her own sake. She didn’t have any plans in the foreseeable future to leave this little island just yet, so she could afford to take it easy for once. There never seemed to be enough of those. Though there had been an influx since she had settled in here. Strange how safety could do that to you.

It was a shame that it had taken her so long to pick the book back up. She had almost forgotten the plot and the characters. In her defence, this wasn’t so much a book with a complex plot or deep characters. It was simply a guilty pleasure trashy romance novel that she had found on an island and had stashed in her small amount of personal belongings.

From what she could remember, the protagonist had just misheard her love interest practicing his confession. And from all this chaos, a rival for his love appears under the guise of a friend. Truly an underhanded move, though not uncommon from books like this. There was a ton of fabricated drama and oddly specific romance scenes that almost made it clear to the reader that the author had never actually experienced the act for themselves. She found it oddly charming, and a considerable amount more amusing than erotic, but she found it best to read it more like a comedy than the attempt at pornographic material. It was almost as if the author wanted it that way by the choice of words. There were most certainly better words for that in the situation. But the clumsy metaphors for genitals and the act of sex added to the charm.

Though the attempt to read this poorly executed smut was interrupted as she noticed that the three boys were no longer on their end of the table, but rather over where she was and with Luffy practically on her lap. This was most certainly not going to be a story time book, if that’s what they were here to ask.

“Hey Robin! We wanted to know what your dream is. Cause everyone’s got a dream. The three of us want to be pirates and to be freer than anyone else, but we don’t know what your dream is and if you’re going to sail with us, you gotta tell us your dream.” She still doubted that they had even decided on who to be the captain of their crew, nor did she think they had a name for them. But she wasn’t going to crush their dreams.

“Are you sure you want me on your crew? I tend to attract very dangerous people.” Though the fact that she already had a wanted poster made that much obvious already. Not only did that bring marines, but there was also bounty hunters after her head. It certainly wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle, but she still wasn’t going to be putting them in any unnecessary danger. That would be both foolish and irresponsible.

“We’re dangerous people. And it’s not like we’re just going to pack up and leave right now. There’s still like a million more things to do. Like deciding who’s going to be captain and everyone respecting it enough to not cause muteny.”

“And getting enough berries to be able to buy a big enough boat for us all to fit.”

“And to get a musician and for you to tell us your dream!” It seemed as though there was a lot more positions to fill on a ship before they got to musician, but it’d be impossible to change Luffy’s mind. There was very little that could, and he was already dead set on the musician.

“It’s alright if you don’t know my dream.”

“No it’s not! If we’re gonna work together to make each other’s dreams come true, we can’t help you if you don’t tell us your dream!”

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

“You sound stupid when you say it like that.”

Once again, Sabo stepped in between the two to get them back on track.

“Yeah if we’re gonna be on a team, it makes sense that we help each other reach our goal.”

“Even if my dream is dangerous, and it means having the world as your foe?”

“We’re gonna be pirates! It’s gonna be dangerous anyways. I don’t care if the world wants to be my enemy, it’s not gonna stop me from reaching my dream! I don’t care who says otherwise! Not even Granpa can stop me!” Luffy proclaimed, not even the slightest bit of hesitation in his heart. With the confidence he held, there wasn’t much room for hesitation.

“Even if saying my dream out loud could put others in danger by even knowing and being associated with me?” There was a heaviness that covered the room. All eyes had been on them for a while now, but this seemed to quiet them down in quiet worry and curiosity. The boys seemed unmoved, and Luffy continued on, despite knowing all this.

“I don’t know what that word means, but if you’re talking about the bandits and Makino and Windmill Town, then that’s okay! Granpa’s gonna protect the island no matter what. So there’s nothing to worry about there. Besides. I’m gonna be King of the Pirates, and that’s already the most dangerous dream I can think of! Because everyone wants to be King of the Pirates, and I’m gonna have to fight lots of guys with lots of dirty tricks to get there, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up!” Funny, the more he spoke of it, the more their dreams shared a lot of key dangers.

“Well, I supposed I could tell you then.” The room was quiet. Had someone dropped a pin, it’d ring clearly though the room.

“I want to find the Rio Poneglyph, I want to know the true history of this world. In order to find it, I need to find the other poneglyphs in order to find it.”

“I don’t see what’s so dangerous about that.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“Well, the true history of the world is something that the World Government would rather keep a secret forever. And seeing as I’m the last one out there that can decipher them, it only seems fitting that I finish what I started with the archaeologists and find the true history for all of us.”

There was a silence, as all this information was taken in by them. She supposed it wasn’t too much information. It was nothing that she would deem enough knowledge to arrest someone over, though it also didn’t seem like enough knowledge to kill over but it would appear that she had been mistaken before.

“The World Government is stupid, of course we’ll help your dream.”

“You boys are really too kind.”

Chapter Text

Today they were going to do something different. This was something that Sabo had planned for a while. And it was a little dangerous for him to do something like this, but it was he was certain that this was something that they all deserved. It required a lot more careful movements and for them to stick together and not risk getting lost because this was a place where they’d have a way harder time avoiding the police.

This restaurant was in High Town. It was a place that lacked the charm and character that Low Town restaurants and bars had, but what it lost there, it made up for in really rich flavors. Plus it was a place where you could dine and dash and not feel bad about it. It wasn’t like the workers there weren’t already loaded because if you weren’t from High Town you weren’t allowed in without someone letting you in. The people there wouldn’t have a poor person touch their food.

That being said, it still probably wasn’t as good as that little ramen shop right against the wall leading to Grey Terminal. That old guy and his wife made really good noodles, but Sabo always felt too bad about dining and dashing to do it. It wasn’t that expensive, but everything was kinda expensive when you’re getting ready to spend all your money on your freedom. Hopefully this place would be an okay second place.

“I’ll be the middle, because I’ve gotta be the hands. Ace should probably be the bottom.” Ace scoffed as Luffy laughed mockingly. This was an expected, but bad start.

“Why do I gotta be the bottom?” It was the worst job, because you had to carry everyone else while they just had to sit on your shoulders. Sabo had to be smart about this.

“Well, do you want Luffy to carry us then? We can’t be sure that his rubber powers won’t knock him right over.” It’d be funny up in the mountains, but it mattered here. Especially since they were infamous for being thieves. No traditional thief was allowed in High Town, you had to be the right kind of criminal. They were too dirty and hands on to be that.

“I wouldn’t tip over!”

“We could get Robin to sturdy him up with some hands.” Ace argued for the sake of arguing.

“Yeah but how messed up would our knees look if we had extra arms in place. Plus Luffy would tip us over in an instant.” He was a good kid, but he wasn’t the strongest.

“I wouldn’t fall over!! Lemme do it so that I can prove it.” Sabo had forgotten about Luffy being there. He accidentally egged him on and now the plan might suffer.

“How about you carry them on the way back?” Thankfully Robin had his back. He wouldn’t know what he’d do if he was stuck with them bickering all the time.

“Yeah! And then we can see how good I did compared to Ace!” Ace looked none too happy about this, but hopefully this will all have been forgotten about and Sabo could take his lumps and let Luffy be the middle and Ace be the top next time. But Luffy wasn’t really one you could plan with. He was like Ace and Sabo was going to have to stay on his feet and plan around them.

They put on the coat that they used to sneak in. Ace could be sour about this all he wanted, but soon that attitude would change. They’d lead the way, with Robin following under her own cloak. This was a little risky, but nothing in life that was worth it wasn’t.

All it took was a little flash of that worthless little badge that no matter how much he hated where it came from, loved that it burned the previous owner with rage that it went missing. The people of High Town were stupid and never checked further than the badge, so why wouldn’t Sabo exploit that? If they got mad then it was their own system that they were really mad at, and there was nothing they could do to stop or even catch him.

With careful feet nudges, Sabo guided their lumbering tower and Robin towards a fancy looking shop. He vaguely remembered coming here before, and he was excited that this time he could let loose. He could already feel his mouth watering at the memory and aroma that was coming from the restaurant.

“Hello, do you have a reservation today?” The host asked. Sabo didn’t need to answer, he simply flashed his badge again.

“We would like a VIP table today. And start us off with four bowls of your finest ramen.” He said in a fake deep voice. He needed to sound like an adult, and out of the three of them, he’d say that his voice was the one that sounded the manliest. He’d give light kicks and pinches to the light snickering above and below him.

“Oh! Right this way sir.” The host lead them back to one of the VIP rooms. It felt so much different coming here now. Despite everything, it still held a forbidden element to it. Maybe that would make the ramen that much tastier.

They had to stay put, as they waited patiently for the food to be brought to them, and for the doors to close. A few breaths passed as they waited for them to leave, before him, Ace, and Luffy came pouring out of the coat to stuff their faces.

Sabo was right, the forbidden taste of the ramen made it way tastier. Knowing he could slurp up those noodles as messily as he wanted without worrying about getting in trouble somehow gave it a richer taste to it. All foods should be like this. He could only see from his peripheral vision, that his brothers were also enjoying their food.

“Bring us more food! Leave it at the door and we’ll get it.” Ace grunted in a low voice like he was trying to sound mature. This was why it should be left to Sabo, because he had the better adult voice, seeing as he was the more mature of the three.

“Your food is waiting for you at the door, sir.” Wait, who was gonna be the one to grab it. Arms spawned on the door.

“Thank you.” Robin smiled, as her hands opened the door and pulled in the food before dragging it over to them. She had by far the coolest power ever. He wished that he could have a cool power like that one day.

They went on for rounds for a solid couple hours. Robin tapped out pretty early, but that just meant more for them. Who was he to judge? Fortunately the talk had been kept to a minimum, because as they had learned quickly, you could keep Luffy mostly quiet by shoving food into his mouth or even just putting it in front of him.

But now they had to leave. And while they could rush past the door like its nothing, Sabo would like to know where any of the fun was in that. Naturally there was only one option. It was big and bright, and it was literally sitting across from them the whole time. He didn’t even need say anything. He gestured to it with a tilt of his head and a mischievous grin, and was met with the same look in return.

They’d bust through the open window and start running. Soon enough actual cops would be after them, but that was part of the experience. If there was one thing other than food that High Town got kinda right, it was law enforcement. Too bad that none of them even held a candle to the four of them, so running through the town to the exit was a breeze.

“Sabo?” A voice grabbed him like a monster would grab a kids foot that slipped out from under the covers. It made him stop for the briefest of seconds before he started running again. “Sabo get back here!”

“Does that geezer know you or something?” Ace asked, despite being someone who should know better.

“I’ve never met him in my life.” His tone came out harsher than he meant, but that was neither here nor there. And now escape had a much higher price.

But as tasty as the ramen was, it was nothing compared to the reminder he got of how beautiful Mt. Corvo was. This was something that he was never going to take for granted ever again.

Chapter Text

There was something that seemed to hang in the air after they had gotten back into the safety of the forest. Though she had to admit that the chase itself was leagues more fun than she had ever felt getting chased, there was still something that was on her mind since before all this began.

The clues were all starting to come together, and she wished that she wasn’t the type to notice little details like this. It was something that had come in handy before and had saved her life many times in the past, but this time it painted a sad picture that felt uncomfortably familiar.

She wouldn’t say anything, but she could tell on Ace and Luffy’s faces that this wasn’t something that they were going to let go. And judging by the look on Sabo’s face, he already knew what was coming.

“So how’d you know that guy back there? Cause obviously he knew you.” Ace said, cornering Sabo.

“Yeah! Did you do a bad job of robbing him?” Luffy asked, giving Sabo an unintentional out.

For now, Robin would stand to the side and watch. She had seen Luffy lie and Ace lie, neither of them were what one would call a good liar. They made too little eye contact and had too obvious a face. Their genuine natures made it hard for them to lie and that was simply the fact of the matter. Perhaps this would be her chance to see Sabo lie.

Sabo squirmed uncomfortably, and Robin felt that twinge of sympathy again. Being with these boys had made her so soft. “Perhaps he had killed someone at a very young age? You’d gather a lot of attention for yourself that way.”

Perhaps she had gone too drastic, given the shocked reaction from all three boys. Though it was hard to fully gage what outcomes would happen with the boys, she had to wonder if maybe she had helped him just a little. A minimal sort, but it would make his pained past something that could be brushed past and help them move on.

“Sabo did you kill someone???!!!” Luffy yelled, shaking Sabo who was still recovering from the shocking out he was given.

“Did you at least do it in a cool way? You had to have been sloppy cause you got caught.” Ace was shaking him now too. “Did you mean to get caught? Were they a message?”

She felt a little bad for Sabo being shaken like this, but given what she had seen them go through, it was nothing. What she had said had more of an impact than she would’ve liked. Though she didn’t regret it. Their reactions to all this were pretty funny.

“What?! No! I’ve never killed someone!”

“It’s fine if you did, we’ve got your back no matter what! You’re our friend!” She really hoped that Luffy would continue to be this person as he grew up. He was supportive in the most criminal way and it was almost a little cute.

Sabo took a deep breath in, and Robin began to wonder if this was going to be the truth, or if he was going to try to lie. “I was born a noble. That man back there was my dad. Him and my mom were cruel and heartless, and I knew if I wanted any sort of freedom, I had to run. So I did and I never looked back. I’d rather die than have to go back.”

That was exactly what she was expecting to hear. Maybe not to that extent, but he was a soft hearted boy. If she was someone that was worth saving, Sabo would’ve done everything in his power to save her. No matter what her wishes were. His shoulders looked tense as he waited for an response from them.

“Why would we care about all that? You’re still Sabo.” Both Ace and Luffy responded, fingers deep in their noses.

“You were the ones that asked!” Sabo yelled back, that weight having been lifted off his shoulders. Robin couldn’t help but laugh at the scene. It was obvious to her that no matter what he would’ve said that he would’ve been accepted instantly, but she supposed that sort of thing was never obvious when you were living it in the moment.

At least Sabo learned that even the parts of him he was ashamed about were parts that they were all still willing to accept. They all had parts of of them that they were either not proud of or were dangerous. Yet even despite all that they were still a family. It was nice, like being back with the scholars on Ohara.

“And if they ever try to do anything to you, I’m sure I could use some gentle persuasion to make them leave.” Robin smiled. It felt wrong to outright state that she would snap their necks. These were strong children in unideal situations, but they were still children.

Sabo looked a little conflicted on the issue. “I don’t want you getting involved in this mess if it ever happens. What if they find out who you are and they try to take you away. Gramps isn’t here all of the time, he can’t make everyone listen.”

“Don’t be silly, a corpse can’t out me.” Sometimes murder could ease someone’s mind. Life was just weird like that. “Trust me I know, I’ve done this for a long time.” Sabo still looked uneasy.

“And if Robin can’t get there first, I’ll kick their butts instead.” Ace boasted.

“Yeah! Me too!!” Sabo was so overwhelmed by all this that he had to hide his face in his hands.

“I still don’t like this, this is my problem to deal with.”

“You’re our friend!! What kind of friends would we be if we didn’t protect each other!? You’ve saved me from lots of crocodiles so its only fair that we save you!”

Sabo groaned and pulled down his hat as he squirmed to process these feelings.

“Fine whatever.”

Chapter Text

What Luffy had said the other day had got him thinking. Friends only begun to describe what they were. It felt so cheesy to even think it, but what they had was something he had longed for for a long time. Even before Luffy, the bandits seemed to be gruffer and the hatred was mutual. It was something that he had seen a few times on trips into town to steal cheep clothing for him back before Makino would bring stuff up for them.

He’d think about him and Luffy bicker and it held a different feeling to it. Something that never truly made sense until Luffy came into the picture. His fights with Sabo had always kinda been like this, but now he saw them differently. He never really worried about Sabo, because he was someone who could protect himself. They were like business partners. Robin was different, because he never really fought with her, but being around her weirdly made him feel like Luffy, like he had to prove himself or something. Ace never had to prove anything to anyone. He didn’t care what people thought of him, because he already knew they hated him.

But now things were different. He had people that actually cared about him, and that he cared for in return. It was weird, because he was almost happy that Luffy had come along and made him so soft. Because now he had a family. He’d never admit it to that twerp. Luffy’d be so smug about it and he’s have to kick his ass.

Luckily for all of them, Ace was a man and could push past stupid kids like Luffy. He was a big enough man to be able to know that this was going to get him mocked, but they were going do this right and make it official. He was also the only one of them that knew what kind and where the booze was so that he could steal it for them. Robin might be old enough to legally get it, but that was no fun and also she probably didn’t even know the right kind.

And so now they were on their way to the big stump in the woods that they used for beetle fights when they realized that there were better and cooler stages than the wood cutting stump by Dadan’s. It was in the middle of the forest, and in Ace’s professional opinion, was the best place for this. No one was gonna bother them out here and they could just focus on the ceremony.

“Why do you have cups? Are we gonna fight with little beetles in the cups then make them fight on the stumps and the losers have to eat their beetles?” For once that was an almost good idea that Luffy had. Too bad the good fighting beetles were never that small.

“No stupid, don’t you know that when you share a drink together, you become brothers?” He’d say it gruffly. It was for the protection of his ego. He couldn’t just say emotional things out loud all gentle like. He’d be a fool.

“You’ve brought four cups. Does that mean I’ll be drinking as well?” Robin asked. It was a weirdly dumb question for Robin. It’d be something he’d expect from Luffy, but not from her.

“Well yeah. You’re one of us, aren’t you?” Maybe this was cause she wasn’t included in a lot of stuff when she was growing up.

“Well I’m a girl.”

“So? Girls can be brothers.” Ace didn’t appreciate the look that she gave him. It was the “no but okay” look that she gave Luffy when he said something stupid that he had dug his heels on. She was going to be part of this family whether she wanted to or not. They were all in this now.

“Where’d you even get that? They don’t even let us into those stores. They always chase us out with a broom.” You try to steal booze one time to see what the big deal is about. Jokes on them because now the four of them were going to taste it and no one was going to be able to stop them because they were all the way out here in the woods. No one even knew that this was going to happen.

“I stole it from Dadan’s stash.” She had let her guard down and that was her own fault. What kind of bandits got stolen from anyways.

Now that the cups were poured, it was time to toast. He stopped when he looked over to Luffy. “Why the hell are you crying?! What’s your problem?! Crybaby!” Honestly, you can’t even do something nice for this kid. He’s always gonna cry no matter what.

“I’m just so happy.” The crybaby sobbed.

“I’m gonna take back the toast if you don’t stop crying!” He wasn’t. Luffy had softened him up so much that he almost cared a little that he was crying, even though he did it all the time. Sabo and Robin both gave him a look, but they both knew he was a crybaby and that someone had to toughen him up. He was the hardest one out of all of them so he was the most qualified.

But as Ace and everyone else knew, Luffy instantly stopped crying, curling his lips in as if he had used them as a cork for his emotions. That was better. Plus now they’d all be able to enjoy this without Luffy’s wailing. He didn’t know why they both looked so unimpressed with him and why he kinda felt bad about it now. For as good as it could be, being soft and having a family also kinda sucked.

Regardless, Ace held up his cup. From here on out, everything was going to be different. He was going to be a part of a family now, and they had no choice but to be part of his. They were bound by booze oath. You can’t break those.

“To brotherhood!”

“To brotherhood!” They clinked their little saucers of booze together then drank it.

Hopefully this was going to be way better than the booze. Because who knew that booze was so bad.

Chapter Text

They had been brothers for a few days, when Sabo had come up with the best idea ever. They were going to build a house of their own in the forest, and then that way the bandits couldn’t keep telling them what to do. Every part of this sounded great. It was a place of their own, and no one could tell them what to do. It was as much freedom as they could get before they had saved up enough to be pirates for real.

The adventure was going to start by going to Grey Terminal. Rich people threw out tons of stuff. You could find lots of cool things in there. They especially liked to throw away furniture and wood pieces that they didn’t like. That’s what it looked like anyways. Its like they had no idea the cool stuff that you could build with it. Nobles must’ve been pretty stupid if they were throwing all sorts of treasures like this away.

Everyone else was looking for wood, so that probably meant he could look for cool stuff in the garbage for their house. The perfect thing would be a periscope. If he could find one of those, they could probably even look out to see from the forest. It would make their house the coolest house ever if they could do that. It’d be just like being on a ship! Everyone was gonna think it was the coolest if he came back with it!

A can hit Luffy in the back of the head. It didn’t hurt but it was really annoying cause he was trying to do something. “Stop messing around and keep looking for wood, idiot.” Luffy couldn’t help but stomp his feet a little, because he was helping with the house, and they had three whole other people looking for it. It’d be way more helpful if Robin could use her devil fruits, but if she did she could get caught then they’d all be in big trouble.

“I’m helping make our house cool! I’m gonna find a periscope to put on it!” Ace needed to learn how to be cool like Sabo and Robin. They’d understand for sure.

“We can work on doing that after, Luffy.” Sabo said, betraying his trust. He looked to Robin, because she’d be on his side.

“How about I help you find one later when we’re done building?” This was betrayal at its finest. He’d shoot a look to Ace because he must’ve put them up to this, because he was a known buttface. Ace stuck his tongue out at him and hopped over to the next pile.

“Fine! I’ll just find more wood than you! Buttface!!” He’d stick his tongue out at Ace and blow a raspberry. He didn’t answer back but that’s probably how deep his challenge got to him.

Who knew that the wood finding was going to be so boring. They had all the wood now but it felt like it took a thousand years to do. Rich people should make their wood easier to find so that they didn’t have to waste all the time in the world to build their house. They were so selfish.

He dropped the wood in a big pile with the rest of it. He wasn’t going to say it of acknowledge it, but Ace got more wood than him. It wasn’t fair because Ace was three years older so that was three years of wood collecting skill that he had on him. He’d have him beat by the time he was ten for sure.

Robin put a bucket of nails with some hammers next to the pile. Sabo bumped the palm of his hand against his forehead. “Duh, of course! I knew I was forgetting something. Thanks Robin.” Sabo looked around the pile to see if he was forgetting something. Then turned his gaze upward.

“You guys know what’s better than a regular house? A tree house.” Sabo grinned. This had to have been to make up for how boring the wood getting was. The only thing that was better than a tree house was a ship, but tree house was a close second.

“Our house should have a flag! That way it’d be the coolest it can be before we get a ship!” Because it’d be like a ship in the air, and even if it couldn’t go anywhere it’d still need a flag.

The looks he got from Ace and Sabo were maybe the best he had ever gotten. It meant that it was a really good idea and everyone thought so. He had a lot of good ideas, but a lot of the time his brothers didn’t agree.

“How about you look for good trees, I get a head start on lunch, and Robin and Luffy can go look for rope. And once we’re done lunch, we can work on the flag.” Ace said, trying to take command even though Sabo was the tree house leader cause it was his idea. Sabo kinda squinted at him. Sabo would probably be the best at tree testing cause he was just better at stuff than Ace. But hunting was always so much more fun.

“It’s not even lunch time yet?” Was the most important thought that he took away from that though. It felt like so much longer had passed since morning. There had to be a mistake.

“How about we race Ace back? I bet we can find rope before he can catch something for all of us.” He grinned wildly with excitement. This was why Robin was the best. She was smarter than everyone probably.

“Yeah! Get ready to get your butt kicked, buttface!” Luffy stuck his tongue out at Ace before running down the mountain side. He was gonna find it so fast he wouldn’t even know what hit him. Robin was fast so he wouldn’t have to worry about her keeping up. He didn’t stop to see the look on Ace’s face but he knew that he was gonna be so mad and grumpy about all of this when he lost and that was the most important part.

He got back to Grey Terminal and started digging. There was no where that this rope could hide from him! He had Robin on his side so he was unstoppable! And if he found a periscope then that’d be a win no matter what, but still he’d work hard on finding that rope!

It felt like he was going through a million piles of garbage. Why did the rich people all seem to covet rope. They were weird in what they kept and treasured. But regardless of their selfish ways, he found some. It was long and he had to pulled it out like a magician eating spaghetti. He held it over his head and spun around looking for Robin.

“Robin!!! I found rope!!” She popped up over the garbage hole he had dug for himself and looked into his little hole.

“Nicely done, Luffy.” She smiled and held out her hand. She might not’ve been able to use her devil fruit, but he sure was. There probably was only rope ways to get out of the hole if he didn’t. But also he wanted to show her how good he was getting when he reached up to get her.

He beamed brightly as he was pulled out of the hole by his own devil fruit skills. He was getting way better at aiming cause he was practicing so hard. Robin even clapped for him and he didn’t even forget the rope in the hole. Ace was gonna be so jealous that he was getting better at his rubber powers.

“Now we gotta run back so that Ace doesn’t beat us!” Finally he was gonna beat Ace. He had Robin on his team, but he had found the rope on his own so it still counted!

“I still don’t get why we need rope. I do have my devil fruit powers.” Robin said as they were running through the jungle. She could be so naive.

“Yeah, but that takes all the fun out of it! We gotta do it the hard way so it feels like we really earned it! You’re gonna feel so tough when we’re done!” She was gonna thank them later. He could feel it.

Running back up the the wood clearing, his mood instantly soured. He saw Ace sitting on a big bear with a smug look on his face. The worse part was he couldn’t even be that mad because he was excited for meat. This was the worst.

Chapter Text

Their house was done and they could stand and marvel at all their hard work. For a couple of kids who didn’t know much about building, they did pretty good. He didn’t know how good Robin was at building stuff, but Sabo was sure that Luffy being Luffy helped balance her out to keep their house as impressive as it was.

It was certainly a lot better looking than the places he saw in Grey Terminal. They were haphazardly thrown together, while somehow theirs managed to look cooler than any place Sabo had ever seen. Maybe in his life. It might’ve because they had built this together, or it might’ve been because they were better than this than anyone on the island at the very least.

But staring at it, he couldn’t help but be drawn to the bare spot at the top. They had already planned for a flag, but right now it looked incomplete. They were definitely going to have a place to sleep by sundown, but Sabo had to wonder if they’d manage to finish all of this tonight.

Building the house was one thing, but they were also going to have to work together and make this flag too. No one should be stuck with a flag they don’t like. Too bad that while they were so similar, Ace and Luffy almost went out of their way to disagree on everything. That was going to make flag building really hard. Even with Robin’s help, it’d still be a fight against the other half of this equation to get anything done.

The three of them were going to grab sticks and sketch out ideas for flags in the dirt. Who ever came up with the best idea would get to have theirs used when they finally made the real thing. They still had to find paint and material, but they’d worry about that once they knew what they were going to put on it.

Robin sat off to the side to observe them. He couldn’t blame her, since trying to figure out flags was hard work. Him and Ace both had ideas floating around in their heads for years, and while he couldn’t say the same for Luffy, but there was at least a fifty percent chance that he did too. The problem Sabo and Ace always ran into was drawing the skull. It was the biggest obstacle in their way. They were so tricky and always the most iconic thing about pirate flags.

But as Sabo thought about it, he started to question why it even mattered. Being a pirate was all about living by your own rules and being free. Why should Sabo listen to rules made by someone that was long dead at this point? They were then and Sabo was now. There was nothing that anyone could do to stop him.

The bones in the back were cool and all, but Sabo figured that they could do better than those. If he didn’t need the skull, then he didn’t need those either. The middle part looked like they could only fit an odd amount of letters in there nicely, but there was four of them. Sabo liked to think that he was pretty clever, so this was something that he could fix pretty easily.

He could do arms back behind the letters. It made sense to him because Robin didn’t like being the main focus, and it’d show off her cool arm power. It wasn’t obvious, but they’d know what the arms meant. And who cared about anyone else.

But now the real hard part came in. Because how were they going to put their initials in? This was an important decision that couldn’t be taken lightly. It might’ve been tucked deep into the forest where no one dared to travel, but what mattered was that they were going to see it every day and Sabo wasn’t going to look at a flag that sucked.

“How come yours doesn’t have a skull, pirate flags gotta have those.” Luffy said, blocking his view of what Sabo was working on with his big melon head.

“Sabo what the hell? I know you’ve seen them before.” Ace joined in the shaming.

“If we’re pirates, that means we don’t have to play by anyone’s rules but our own. So I’m doing my own thing with our flag.”

“I bet it’s cause you can’t draw a skull.” Luffy taunted, finger knuckle deep in his nose.

“Well lets see your skulls then!” If they were going to mock him then they had better be able to draw amazing skulls.

Proudly taking on the challenge, his brothers puffed out their chests and used their sticks to draw arguably the worst skulls he’d ever seen.

“I’m sorry, who can’t draw skulls?”

“Fuck off! You can’t draw them either!” Ace wasn’t too happy about getting a taste of his own medicine. Luffy laughed at Ace, despite his skull looking more like a peanut than anything.

“Besides, I think this would be better for us. It’d be more us than we could spread out over a dumb skull anyways.”

He’d put his S in the middle, because he’d always have to be the guy in the middle to keep those two from fighting more than they already did. He’d step back and let them figure the rest out.

Ace was the first to swoop in and get the spot on Sabo’s left side. “I’m first because of the three of us, I’m the oldest.”

He wasn’t, but he didn’t feel like having this fight right now. He wasn’t even the tallest of the three of them but he could go on living in his web of lies that he had built for himself.

“Well I wanted to be on the right anyways.” Luffy puffed his chest out. The way his lips curled told Sabo otherwise, but again you had to pick your fights. Poking at him would only make him want to dig his feet in more.

“So what do you think, Robin?” Sabo watched as an eye opened up on Ace’s forehead as they all leaned over it. It was weird and gross, but at least he knew she was looking for sure.

“I think it looks great.”

Then it was decided. Later they’d stop by the bandits to see if they could loot supplies. If not, Low Town was still an option. Sabo felt a light excitement about him. This was going to be great.

Chapter Text

Robin’s fighting style was really cool. It was really effective and it showed just how cool devil fruit users could be when they knew what they were doing. Sabo couldn’t help but wonder how long it’d take for Luffy to get there.

But the thing about Robin’s style was that it gave away who she was. Because how could you not know about that cool power she had for all that time. She was on the run for a long time, but even someone like Robin had to slip up some time. And a slip up would mean a lot worse things for her now because she had a family to be with.

She couldn’t just stop fighting. There’d be no fun in that. She would have to sit back and watch and keep an eye on the house, and that wasn’t fair. Besides, now she didn’t have to kill everyone she was in a fight with. She could afford to take it easy and just beat people up. She wasn’t on the run and she wasn’t being chased down by the world.

Normally, she had taken to sitting off to the side and watching them spar. There were some pretty devastating losses on their end the first time. She was just too fast and too effective. She had eight years on him and Ace, and eleven on Luffy. Not to mention she had a devil fruit she was good at. But today Sabo had something else in mind.

“Hey Robin. I wanna try something different.” She raised her eyebrow at him slightly.

“Oh? You wanna try sparring with me again?” This got raised eyebrows and doubt from Ace and Luffy, but he was gonna stay strong on this.

“Something like that. A fight with no devil fruits.” Ace and Luffy shot surprised looks at each other, because he doubted that they thought of it either. That’s what they got for doubting him, their own brother.

“Are you sure you want this, Sabo?” Now it was a challenge to his manhood. He was strong, and no amount of caring smile was going to stop him now. He had made his choice and she couldn’t back out of this now.

“Of course I am.” He couldn’t back down now even if he wanted to. He brought it up, but she started it.

They went to their respective sides of the ring and waited for the bell.

“Bing bing!!” He’d start off easy on her. She probably never fou-

-He blacked out for the faintest of second, but was on the other end of the ring on his back and out of breath. His stomach hurt and he was a little disoriented.

“My apologies, I’m not used to standard hand to hand. I might not have held back as much as I should have.” She smiled sweetly, but he smelt fowl play.

“You weren’t supposed to use your devil fruit!” He huffed, because this was an injustice, pure and simple.

“Sabo she didn’t use her devil fruit. She just knocked you on your ass like Gramps does.” Ace leaned against a tree, picking his nose.

“Yeah, ‘cept she didn’t grab you by the head and toss you. That’s his favorite move.” Luffy also commented, also with his finger in his nose. He’d be sure to knock both of them flat for this.

“Here I was worried that you’d need a new fighting style to not give yourself away.” He rubbed his stomach a little as he slumped over to the sidelines.

“I appreciate the concern, but I already told you I can take care of myself.” He could tell by the way he got his butt kicked. She was way stronger than he thought. Maybe she could teach them some stuff between Gramps visits.

“Oh!!! I wanna go next!!! Except against Ace!” Luffy grinned. He looked like he had another move planned. Sabo couldn’t help but wonder how this one was going to go wrong. He loved Luffy, but he had issues of sticking with one move and trying to make it work. Or not working to fix moves he keeps using.

“Alright. Don’t cry when I beat you though.” Luffy puffed out his cheeks angrily as he went over to his side.

“You’re the one that’s gonna cry! Cause I’m the one that’s gonna win!”

“Stop the trash talk and get fighting.” Sabo reminded them. Why were they always like this. It was such a pain in the butt.

“I’ll make this a little more fair, I’ll even give you one free swing. I won’t even move.” It seemed a little rude Ace’s part, but that was how their relationship was. Even if Luffy hadn’t landed a proper blow on either of them they still had to be a little supportive of their little brother.

Luffy puffed himself up and had that look on his face that he had when he had something to prove. So long as this didn’t push him over the edge of anger it might be good for him.

“Gum gum… Pistol!” This was the cleanest swing he had ever seen Luffy do. It went straight as an arrow and nailed an equally stunned Ace in the face. The force from the blow knocked both of them on their butts. This was gonna have to come down to technicalities.

“Well… It was Luffy’s blow and you went down first… So I’m gonna say this round goes to Luffy.” Plus it was worth it. The look on his face was so excited.

“Yeah!! I beat Ace!!” He happily bounced about. “My training paid off!!” He’d jump into Robin’s arms.

“You’ve gotten so much better, Luffy.” She smiled down at him. Sabo had a feeling they had something going on, but he wouldn’t say anything if Ace wasn’t. Besides, training wasn’t cheating, even if it was secret training.

“I want a rematch! That doesn’t count if I give him a free shot!” He knew that Ace’s pride took the biggest blow today. They all wanted Luffy to win a match, but no one wanted to lose to him. He was still their baby brother after all.

“It does so count! I got you so good!” Luffy argued from Robin’s arms.

“Well you still have another thirty two fights with him today, so we can see who wins those ones. Luffy still gets his point.” It felt a little fun saying it. Sometimes you had to pick on your brother a little.

“Fine! Well I’ll just get more points than him.”

“Not if I get you with another gum gum pistol!” Luffy grinned smugly at Ace. One fight and it had already gone to his head.

“If you can manage that again, you little punk.”

“You’re on!”

Chapter Text

They had had their first real test of being on their own. A big storm had hit, and they only suffered minor damage. They lost their flag which was probably the most disappointing part. Granted, that was kinda their own fault because they left Luffy in charge of that and he was still Luffy.

“Next time Robin’s gonna be in charge of the flag. I can’t believe you’d let it fly away like that.” Ace said, starting another fight.

“It’s not fair! I got all blown away by the wind! That’s not my fault!”

“Next time fly off with the flag. At least we know you’re impossible to lose.” Ace crossed his arms and glared at Luffy.

“Well we know for next time that Luffy does bad in the wind. It was a bad storm anyways.” It was a wasted effort, because Sabo knew both of them were looking for a fight now.

“How about you boys go look for wood for repairs, and I’ll look around the island for the flag. I’m sure its somewhere, unless it was eaten by a crocodile or fell into the sea.” Sabo knew he could trust Robin to be reasonable about this. He still wasn’t sure if she knew just how important this kind of thing was, but he still appreciated her being on his side.

Ever being the one to find a reason to fight over stupid stuff, Ace latched onto the negatives and hit Luffy over the head with his fist. It lurched forward before snapping back, shifting his hat out of place.

“You better hope it didn’t, or I’m kicking your ass.” Sabo knew it didn’t hurt, but Luffy rubbed the spot and readjusted his hat.

“I still got a point on you!” He wasn’t gonna let that go, wasn’t he. If it didn’t make Luffy so happy that the he got it, Sabo might’ve regretted it. Though he’d see if he changed later.

“Guys, you can fight on the way. Let’s go get the wood so we can fix our house.” Sabo picked at some of the windows the storm put in. Hopefully they just needed to patch some up, but they’d be ready for if they needed to swap ‘em out completely. It was still gonna be a pain to haul all that stuff back up the mountain.

“And while we’re down there I can find a periscope!” Luffy beamed, setting off down the mountain. They’d follow close behind as not to lose him. They already had a flag to find, they didn’t need to add Luffy into that list.

“You mean a telescope? Thats the long one. Periscopes are on submarines.” This was probably up there among the stupidest arguments that those two had ever had. It only just started but Sabo knew.

“You don’t know if thats what I mean.” Luffy argued, sticking his tongue out.

“No one knows what you mean ever, Luffy.” That one got a snicker out of Sabo. Luffy was the worst when you didn’t catch him at the beginning of a thought. He never explained himself and you just had to figure out what he meant.

Though it seemed to be a pretty devastating blow, because it got Luffy to sulk quietly for a bit. It was still Luffy, so he was back to his normal happy self in no time. It was a quiet first half of their trip, before Luffy started making up songs about telescopes and periscopes and how they’re all the same. It was going to be a fight in multiple parts, and that was something that they were just going to have to deal with.

Getting to Grey Terminal, they decided to all split up. It’d be just like how they found the wood in the first place. It’d be faster since the wood was naturally scattered everywhere through the garbage. Maybe he’d even find a telescope for Luffy while he was down there. Maybe he’d find something that’d be fun and useful for a trap. A cannon, or at least a cannonball, would be nice.

He’d still focus at the task at hand. So much wind would get in tonight if they didn’t find enough wood. Not like that was that big a deal, since most of them were tough and stuff like this didn’t bother them, but maybe for Luffy’s sake. He was still a kid after all.

His search was stopped by a sudden feeling of unease. It felt like someone was staring at him. Normally all the people here were fine. They were gruff like the bandits, but they mostly just didn’t want any trouble. Though there was the odd person every now and again that needed to learn how to mind their own business.

“Hey, I think that’s the kid we’re lookin for.” Crap… This was gonna be such a pain in the neck. He was gonna have to deal with them before they got word back to whoever was looking for him. Because it was never good when someone had thugs out looking for you.

“Make sure you bring ‘im back unharmed or the boss’ll have our heads.” The other thug grunted, picking up his pace towards him.

Fortunately for Sabo, thugs like this weren’t tough at all. It was two against one, and still they didn’t stand a chance. He had his pipe, and he was ready to hit them until they were down for the count. They weren’t allowed to seriously rough him up, so any chance they had was already ruined no matter how many of them there were.

Was a thought he would instantly like to take back. Soon there were easily four times as many of these goons coming out of the woodworks to try and grab him. This was such a pain. He might have to try and outrun these guys. They had longer legs, but they were all scraggily and rough looking. Sabo was still smaller and harder to catch and could easily lose these fools in the trees if he could get there.

His odds got significantly better when a barrel holding two of his brothers came barreling into the area. He felt a little better with these odds, even if Luffy was looking a little on the dizzy side. This was something he could work with.

Gunshots broke up the scuffle, and they all seemed to take for cover in different places. That same fearful feeling as he had felt the last time he was in town gripped him as he focused on one familiar face.

“Don’t you know how hard I’ve been looking for you, Sabo?” He tried to back away, but ended up right into one of the goons’ arms. He did his best to thrash, but he had a solid grip on him.

“Give Sabo back!” Luffy yelled, squirming as he was held tightly against the ground. He knew that physically it wasn’t hurting him, but emotionally it must’ve been awful.

“Give him back? What nonsense is this? Sabo is my son! We parents gave our children life. It’s their duty to do whatever we tell them to do! How dare you incite him to leave his home. Are you after our wealth, you trash?” Sabo had heard versions of that lecture before. It cut way deeper now that his brothers were involved. They didn’t deserve to be spoken too like that.

“We don’t give a shit about any of that! Sabo’s our brother and you can’t have-” Ace was cut short by being thrown into the ground. He wasn’t made of rubber, and it sounded like they weren’t holding back with them like they were for Sabo. They were in much more danger than he was.

“Careful, I don’t want street urchin blood on my nice clothes.” His dad heartlessly ordered, dabbing blood off his cheek with a handkerchief. This was exactly why he left in the first place.

“They didn’t make me do anything! This was my choice and my-”

“-Silence.” He should’ve known his dad wasn’t interested in listening. He never was. “Deal with these brats as you see fit.”

“You’re payin me an arm and a leg, so you got it.” Bluejam grinned a sadistic grin. Sabo already knew what take care of meant. It made his stomach churn with guilt. Because if something were to happen to them, he’d have no one to blame but himself.

“Bluejam wait! Dad I get it! Call him off!” He couldn’t take it. Anything would be better than knowing that the blood would be on his hands for this if anything happened to them. He loved them too much to stomach it.

“You get what?” His dad was going to make him say it, wasn’t he.

“Sabo don’t!” Ace begged. Sabo had already made up his mind. Even if it cost him his freedom, it was nothing if it meant his brothers got to live.

“I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll live the way you want me to live! Just please.” His voice was breaking, and he couldn’t hide the tears anymore. It stung too much. “Don’t hurt them. They’re my precious brothers.”

“You’re not gonna just give up like that! Are you Sabo?!” Ace begged far more than Sabo knew he meant to.

“Come along now. We’ve got a lot of paper work to go through thanks to your little stunt.” He was expected to be pushed along by one of the city guards that he brought with him, but none of them were moving.

“What’s the hold up we’re very bus- What in blue blazes?!” It was an odd reaction, so Sabo had to look up, only to see that arms were holding them in place, and his dad was looking down the barrels of their rifles.

“It seems we have a misunderstanding. That cannot be your son, as I’m not your daughter.” Robin walked out from behind a trash heap. How long had she been there? Also what was she doing? She was gonna get caught!

“What the devil are you- Wait! Aren’t you Nico Robin?!” Crap… This was going to end badly.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Had I been Nico Robin I would have already broken your necks. I can tell you’re a very wealthy and well educated man, so I suppose you’d be familiar with the Marine Hero, Monkey D. Garp, correct?” What was she trying to pull? Was she gonna speak their language and save them all?

“Wait! Grandpa isn’t here, is he?! Would that even be a bad thing right now?” Luffy had a point. This would play out very differently if Gramps was here. It’d certainly be eventful, that was for sure.

“There is no way that gutter trash like you would be a Marine Hero’s Grandson.” If only his dad had known. He’d grab him by the head and throw him around too.

“Well… If you’re so certain, then I’m sure you wouldn’t be afraid of calling him up. I’m sure he’d love to hear about how you’ve treated his grandchildren. But if you’re still willing to try and take his grandson, I’m sure he’ll be glad to get a report about a pirate shooting a noble on the outskirts of town.” Her smile was still there, but the deadly serious look in her eyes made it terrifying. He was glad she was on their side.

“So you admit you’re a pirate! I’ll-” He was cut off by Robin forcing Bluejam’s pistol into his face.

“Betrayal is such a nasty thing, isn’t it. Now if you’ll excuse me.” There was a sickening crack that seemed to reverberate through the garbage. That was definitely bone breaking. He watched as the guards all collapsed, screaming and writhing in pain. “Me and my brothers have to get going. You see, a nasty storm hit last night and we need to do repairs on our home. It’d be nice to get it done by lunch.”

The pirates didn’t hesitate in letting go of his brothers, and now that his dad had no leverage, he also had no son. So the three of them took to the tree line. Robin stared back at the decimation she was leaving behind. She was absolutely ruthless and her bounty definitely made a lot of sense.

There were no words to describe how happy he was. He felt so ashamed of it, but he couldn’t stop crying. It was like all of a sudden he was Luffy. It was kinda embarrassing. It was silent, and he knew that there was gonna be a long talk soon enough. But they were all fine, and they’re all free. That’s all that really mattered.

And he had Robin to thank for that.

Chapter Text

Tonight was all about finding cool stuff for the house. They all yelled at Sabo, they all cried about it, and they all were moving past that because they were all together again. They were still kinda worried about Bluejam and his crew, but it felt safer and sneakier to go at night. They wouldn’t be out looking for anyone at this hour. They’d be like Dadan and be drunk on booze that sucked.

Luffy was for sure gonna find a pelescope and make their house so much cooler. Ace was still certain that he wasn’t gonna find one, but that just meant that Luffy had to now. He was gonna find so many teriscopes that Ace wasn’t gonna know what to do with ‘em all.

Finding anything was tricky. Everything there was so dark. Luffy wished that all the stars would work harder for a second so that he could see anything. There was some moonlight, but not enough for it to really matter in Luffy’s professional opinion.

Luckily everything started to brighten up. Good. That made it way easier to see. He was glad that the stars were listening tonight. He was gonna find that teleriscope in no time!

Maybe they were working too hard, because it was starting to get really hot! He stopped looking down in the garbage to find treasure, and looked around him to see that there were flames all around him! Grey Terminal was on fire!

“Luffy!!” He could hear his brothers call for him. Luffy looked around frantically. Everything was hot and his eyes were melting and the smoke was filling up his lungs. This was scary and awful, and he had to find his brothers fast so that they could get out of here. Hopefully all the people that lived in the garbage would get out of there too.

The moment he spotted them, he ran towards them. “It’s so hot I’m dying!!” They were his big brothers. They’d fix this for sure. They might not’ve been Robin, but they were smart too. At least Sabo was.

“Yeah no shit! We’re not planning on sticking around. Ditch the stuff you’ve found and lets go.” He hadn’t found anything cool yet anyways. He’d just follow them because he couldn’t remember which way he came from and every way they went looked like fire.

It kinda seemed like their escape was going nowhere, but Sabo was there and he had a good sense of direction. He wouldn’t get ‘em lost in the fire. It especially seemed like it was going nowhere when they came to a stop and Luffy ran right into Ace’s back. He fell backwards and realized how hot the pipe on his back was, because he could feel it through his shirt. Stupid metal pipe couldn’t stay normal in the stupid fire.

But thoughts of the stupid fire came to a stop when he looked up to see why they had stopped in the first place.

“Despite you brats being the reason I was locked out of the safety of Low Town, I’m feeling generous. Tell me where your treasure is hidden, and I’ll tell you a way out of the fire.” He stood there with his men, seemingly unbothered by the flames. Luffy looked around, only to see that they were completely surrounded.

“Are you kidding me? If we don’t get out of the fire, we’re all going to die. And you’re still here thinking about money?” Sabo asked. It was really stupid. Plus they worked really hard to get all that.

“We’re not all born with silver spoons in our mouths, marine boys. Now if you’re not going to save it, we might as well.” This creep thinks he can waltz right in and take their stuff? Luffy was about to give them a piece of his mind when Ace started speaking. He’d tell ‘em way better than Luffy could.

“Fine. We’ll tell you.”

“What?! But we worked so hard for all that money!” It was unbelievable. Ace wasn’t the type to just let stuff like this happen. He’d rather kick their butts!!

“Better to be broke than dead. It’s not like we can’t steal more after this.” The look on Bluejam’s face pissed Luffy right off. He was so smug and just really looked like someone that needed to be punched real hard.

He refused to listen to them give away the location of all their hard earned money. There had to have been a better way, but it was too hot and smoky to think clearly. He had been thinking about that when suddenly he had been grabbed by one of the pirates.

“Hey! I told you where the treasure was! What the hell is your problem!?” He was a liar! He had no sense of honor at all! That was why he hated him! Bluejam was just like that sleazy mountain bandit that attacked him when he was younger! He was the worst kind of person!

“Like I can trust you brats. You’re coming with me so I know you’re not lying.” That was a stupid reason! He just didn’t want to hold up his end of the bargain like a coward!

“You’re gonna get us all killed!” Sabo yelled at him.

“I don’t think you understand your position. You royally fucked me the other day with that little stunt you pulled. There’s no Nico Robin around to save you this time. Pretend all you want noble boy, but I know your type. I spent the last month getting looked down upon by your asshole dad and I can see that same look in your eyes. You lot are all the same” Bluejam knew absolutely nothing! Sabo was a good person and shouldn’t be compared even a little to that guy! “Your dad didn’t pay me for the work I did because of you, so that little cache of money you brats have hidden is gonna be a nice head start to getting my revenge on those noble bastards. The charred corpse of his rebellious son might be a nice reminder that we shouldn’t be fucked with.”

He could talk about that jerk and nobles all he wanted, but Sabo was one of the best people he knew! “No one talks about my brother like that!” Luffy bit down as hard as he could on the goon that was holding him’s arm.

His freedom was short lived because as he was falling, the goon drew his sword. “You’re gonna pay for that runt!” Luffy barely had time to try and block it, but the blade cut through his pipe like butter. And then it cut through his face like butter. And that hurt way more than the pointy gloves or the knife he put in there himself did. He couldn’t see anything, but he was rolling around on the ground and that was hot and he couldn’t tell what hurt more.

“Don’t you hurt my baby brother!” He heard his brothers yell, before his head got a little foggy. He could hear a lot of people falling around him, but he missed what happened. He’d open his good eye see what happened.

“What the hell did you do you sneaky little bastard?!” Bluejam grabbed Ace by the collar and grabbed his gun. He wasn’t gonna kill Ace for real, was he?

“Ace!” Both him and Sabo cried out. He didn’t wanna look, because there was nothing that they could do, but he couldn’t close his eyes.

Right before he could pull the trigger, an ax came swinging down and knocked it from his hands. There was no way he was seeing this right.

“You stay away from my brats, you bald headed bastard!!” Dadan yelled, as with all the heroism he had never known her for nor expected from her. If she wasn’t a mountain bandit, it’d almost be cool.

“Dadan!” He was pretty sure this was the happiest any of them had been to see her. Dogra came over and picked him up, arms formed to strap him against him so he couldn’t move as much.

“Luffy you look terrible.” This might’ve been the happiest he’s been to see any of these bandits if he was telling the truth. He looked over and Sabo and Ace were getting a once over by the bandits. They had gotten out of this ordeal pretty alright. Their goons didn’t attack them with swords, and they didn’t have their pipes break on them either.

“So you’re the monkey boss from Mt. Corvo.” He kinda wanted to see how cool Dadan was almost gonna be. He was only kinda paying attention to Dogra trying to get him in a good position to carry.

“I’m Dadan the Bandit. And for some goddamn reason I’ve been left in charge of these kids.” He wanted to see her kick his butt. The entire time he had been up there, he hadn’t seen her fight. He never really cared until now he knew that she knew how to fight. He couldn’t wait to see what she could do.

“Now men…” Here it comes. All the bandits were gonna fight and it was gonna be awesome. “Retreat!!”

It was kinda lame, but that’s more what Luffy expected. They all started running back from where they came.

“I’m not running away.” Ace stayed firm, and it caused chaos in the train of bandits. It’d be funny if it didn’t mean he had to stay here in the hot and breathe in more smoke.

“The hell you mean you’re not running. That pirate’s not gonna play nice with you because you’re a kid!” Dadan scolded. If Ace was fighting, then he should too. He struggled, but more hands popped up to hold him in tighter. He could kinda see it happen to Sabo as arms stuck him to one of the bandits and held him there.

“It’s our fight too!” He watched as Ace pressed the hot pipe into the arms that tried to form around him.

“I’ll bring Ace back. You get the other boys out of here. We got enough to worry about here.” That wasn’t fair! He’d squirm as hard as he could, but all he was getting was kinda dizzy and sleepy. This wasn’t fair. He should be fighting too.

“Come back alive, boss!” Some of the bandits yelled as they ran off towards the exit they had. He didn’t want to leave Ace behind. He was his brother and you couldn’t do a thing like that. Dadan was pretty okay too he guessed.

Everything around him was starting to get hazy, but there was one last thought before he passed out.

Where was Robin going?

Chapter Text

Waking up, he was mostly alone aside from a few bandits. He was all bandaged up, and he was really sore. The hut felt cold, and he had to wonder if it was because of how many people weren’t in it. It was almost weird seeing the place so empty.

His skin kinda hurt when Magra hugged him. It was tight and he was crying all over him. It was kinda gross. Mostly it made it hard for him to focus on what was happening before he fell asleep, because it was a little bit hazy.

“Luffy, I’m so glad you’re alright.” Well it must’ve be something bad, because he was bandaged up so he must’ve got really messed up.

“Where is everyone?” No one spoke up. Oh it was worse than he thought. You know its really bad when no one wants to say anything. It’s like the time they dropped one of Robin’s books in the river by accident. ‘Cept no one was covered in bandages.

“It’s been a week since we last seen them. Boss and Ace stayed behind to fight, then Sabo ran off and Robin ran after him.” They were all missing?? They couldn’t just sit around like this! What if they needed help? He squirmed and every part of his body seemed to reject it.

“Take it easy. You’re in rough shape yourself. You need to rest.” There were tears welling up in his eyes but those weren’t his tears they were just Magra’s tears that he was getting all over him he swears.

“We gotta find ‘em! They can’t just leave me alone!” He lied, they were most definitely his tears in his eyes. His body might’ve hurt, but his heart hurt way more. It hurt worse than any pain he had ever felt before.

“We have to stay here and trust that they’ll be alright. If we go down to where Grey Terminal was, we’ll only be killed. They’re looking for any survivors now. We just have to trust that they’ll be okay. They’re strong, right? It’ll take more than a little fire to get rid of them.” Words weren’t helping him now. Words meant nothing, they were just sounds. Sounds couldn’t fix the loneliness that he was feeling. The bandits were nice and all, but they weren’t who he needed. He needed his brothers. He maybe even needed Dadan. It hurt and there was no fixing the pain that he felt.

The next week felt like forever. He waited for them to come, anyone of them, but they never came. The bandits were starting to lose hope, but he wasn’t. Luffy knew that they wouldn’t leave him alone like that. There was no way that they’d roll over and die.

Ace proved his point by carrying Dadan on his back up to the hut. The pain in his heart was starting to fade. There was still hope for Sabo and Robin. They were a stronger team than Ace and Dadan, so there was no way they were dead. All he had to do now was wait for them to come through the door.

The bandits all rushed over to take care of Dadan, so that meant he could latch to Ace. He couldn’t help but cry he was so happy. It felt like it had been like another seven years since he saw him last. “Ace!!” He was gonna get yelled at, but he didn’t really care. He was so glad to see him.

“What? Did you think I was dead? Stop crying, crybaby. I’m not weak like you.” Ace gave him a pat to the face before punching Luffy off of him. “Don’t go killing me off so easily! Go outside and keep an eye out for Sabo and Robin!”

Ace was mean about it, but it had been forever since he saw him last, so he’d allow it. But he better know that tonight he’s not gonna let him go so he can’t up and disappear again.

Seeing half of his people back made him feel kinda better. The two that he had to worry about were back, so that meant no time at all until Robin and Sabo were back. Everyone else could be inside talking about boring things, but jokes on them, because he’d be playing with all the cool stuff outside.

It was starting to get dark out, but no one had told him to stop keeping an eye out for them, so he’d stay put. Besides, he had a cool lizard that he was playing with. He was a pirate lizard from the Grandline that was sailing around to see all of the Blues. He could fight real good and turn invisible and his name was Grilled Meat.

Grilled Meat was on his latest adventure of fighting a giant beetle on a stump, when he noticed some clouds about to roll in. Stupid rain should’ve showed up a while ago when everything was on fire. Grilled Meat wasn’t too happy about the rain, and scurried off into the grass and away. He must’ve been heading back to his ship.

The wind was picking up too. He was gonna have to head back inside and watch from the window wasn’t he. Maybe there’d be cool lightning at least. That’d be fun to watch when he kept an eye out for them. He started heading towards the hut when a gust of wind started blowing him away.

A hand grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him back down and into arms. His heart got all happy when he got there because he knew who that was. There was only one person who wasn’t him that could reach that high. “Robin!!” He hugged her tightly. He missed her so much.

“Its good to see you again too, Luffy. I’m glad you didn’t get burned alive in the fire.” That was mostly not his doing, cause Dogra ran real fast and also Luffy passed out. But if Robin was here, that meant that Sabo must be too.

He immediately saw a big guy in a cloak standing next to Robin. Something felt familiar about him, but Luffy had no idea who he was. He gave him a look but he didn’t actually care who he was right now. He cared more about the bandaged up Sabo in his arms.

“Is Sabo gonna be okay?” Because he didn’t look okay now. He looked more bandaged up than Dadan, and she was really bandaged up.

“He just needs more rest and to take it easy. He’s in a delicate state right now.” It felt weird hearing Sabo being called delicate. None of them were delicate.

Luffy would climb across onto the big guy so he could get a better look. It looked bad from this angle too. “He got caught in an explosion when he was helping everyone else get to safety. He’s a brave kid.” The big guy grunted. Sounded kinda like a raspier Grandpa.

“Yeah, Sabo’s definitely someone who could be a hero. He shares his meat.” Luffy nodded sagely. Robin laughed a bit and he had no idea why. Robin could be weird sometimes.

For once, Luffy was way more glad to be inside than outside. The weather really sucked outside and you knew it was bad if Luffy didn’t wanna be out in it. He was also happy because all of his people were back. He was with his brothers and also Dadan was there. This was all he wanted from the world right now aside from maybe some meat. Ace and the bandits immediately went over to Sabo and set him up a little bed like they had for Dadan. They should probably set up more beds, because there was no way they were all not sleeping here tonight.

Robin started telling everyone what happened, but Luffy already heard that part and he was more interested in the mystery man. He saved his brothers so he should thank him, right? But looking around the room, he had already left.

There was no way he was gonna leave without saying goodbye, even if he was walking in the storm like it was nothing. Luffy stuck his head out the door to look for him, and already the weather was getting better. He must’ve had a devil fruit too. He still wasn’t gonna get away from him that easily.

Luffy took a deep breath in. “THANK YOU RAIN GUY!!” He yelled as loud as he could. He hoped he could hear him. It wasn’t like Luffy could find him cause the moon was still all behind clouds. Besides if he left he wouldn’t be around his people.

Speaking of, he was gonna go back inside. He was tired, and he could finally get some good sleep now that everyone was back.

Chapter Text

Things had gone mostly back to normal. They were back to sparring and stealing, but no matter how much they tried to shake it, there was a thought that still lingered in the back of their heads. The burning of Grey Terminal was something that was going to stick with them for sure, and so was what they had learned that night.

They weren’t nearly as strong as they needed to be. If they got into another situation like that, who knew what was going to happen. Sabo was now covered in scars, and even Robin had a few new ones on her. They were all keeping an eye on Luffy to make sure he wasn’t picking at the scab on his face, and Ace was mostly just flaking like he got a bad sunburn. But they all knew they were lucky to get out of that alive.

Even if they did reach their goal of enough for at least three ships, it probably wasn’t going to matter because they’d be killed by the first pirate or marine they met. They needed to be strong enough to stand up to anyone. They needed to at least be the strongest. Being smarter wouldn’t be too bad either. They only got into this mess because they weren’t being careful and that they weren’t being smart about anything. If they were going to survive, they’d need to do better.

The way Sabo saw it, there was really only one option. It wasn’t one he liked, and it was a dumb fear that kept him from liking it, but still one he had regardless. “Guys, I’ve been thinkin.” Might as well just go out and say it. It got the attention of the three. “I think we need to wait before we head out on our adventures out to sea.”

“What?! But I thought you wanted to be a pirate!!” Luffy asked, shaking him because it must’ve sounded crazier than he thought.

“You’re not gonna give up on your dream because some jerk tried to kick our asses, are you?”

“Of course I’m not giving up on my dream. But do you really think after what happened at Grey Terminal that any of us other than Robin are ready to set out to sea yet? The East Blue isn’t known for having strong pirates, and if Bluejam was hard for us then we don’t stand a chance out there. We need to get stronger.” He loved his brothers, and he didn’t want them to die. If they left now, they’d die for sure. Maybe not Robin, but Ace and Luffy would.

“What happened there wasn’t something that should be counted. If we weren’t surrounded by fire we would’ve won.” Ace argued like they hadn’t lost to him before.

“But we were, and we barely made it out with our lives. We can’t guarantee that we won’t have the odds stacked against us while we’re at sea. That’s why we need to train harder.” This wasn’t something that he was gonna back down from.

“I’m not gonna wait until I’m old and grey to be a pirate!” Why was Ace and Luffy working together such a pain? They weren’t gonna win this.

“We’re not gonna wait that long! In High Town you become a noble when you turn eighteen. So how about when we turn seventeen, we leave?” It gave them tons of time to train. They’d be tons stronger by the time they all left the island.

“Sabo, you do know that I’m already eighteen.” That was right… He forgot that Robin was already a grown up. She was always one of them, and even if she was taller and stronger, it still slipped his mind.

“Well, how about you stay for at least five years, then you can leave when you want.” Because seven years was how long him and Ace were staying, and she was already tons stronger than both of them together.

“How come she gets to leave so early and I gotta stay twice as long!?” Sabo wasn’t shocked about Luffy arguing, but he was shocked about him knowing that’s twice. That was kinda impressive for Luffy and caught Sabo really off guard.

“Luffy you’re not even half as strong as Robin is. Ten years for you is generous.” Ace said, so Sabo didn’t have to.

“None of us are as strong as Robin, that’d why we’ve gotta work hard and be patient. It’s not like the sea’s going anywhere.” Though it did look tempting every time he caught a glimpse of it. The endless horizon full of an infinite amount of possibilities.

“I’m ready to die for my dream!” Luffy argued, like they all weren’t.

“Luffy, there’s a difference between dying for your dream, and being killed for it. Dying for it means you put everything you have for it. Being killed for it means you’ve bitten off more than you can chew and choke.” Robin said flatly. Her expression soon softened into a smile. Not those scary smiles that Sabo had seen with Bluejam and his dad, but the genuine ones that he saw when she looked at them. “Besides, that means we’ve still got at least another five years together. Who knows when the next time we’ll see each other after then.”

This was why they had to train hard. Not just their muscles, but they were gonna have to get tricky like Robin. It was so cool to watch her words turn Luffy’s sour look into its normal bright and shining state. It was kinda like magic, and there were very few things that weren’t food bribes that you could do to get Luffy to stop sulking other than to wait it out. “Okay! That sounds great!”

“So we all agree now?” Sabo looked at Ace, because he wasn’t happy about this either. His sour face was just how his face looked most of the time, so it was kinda hard to tell.

“Fine. Seven years, and no longer. I can’t be King of the Pirates if I stay here.” Sabo was glad that he at least got that he couldn’t be King of the Pirates if he was dead.

“Well you’re not gonna be King of the Pirates anyways because I’m gonna be King of the Pirates!” Luffy declared. Sabo shot Robin a desperate look, because this was gonna be their whole night now. She sent him back a sympathetic look.

He loved his brothers, but it was gonna be a long seven years, wasn’t it.