A week after I'd carried Robin out of a royal tomb, she moved the last of her luggage onto the Vesper and told me my socks were taking up a bookshelf.
"They're clean," I said, watching several hands pass a wooden case across the deck. She'd spent most of the morning bringing things aboard from the lodgings she'd been using in Nanohana, and the amount of luggage was starting to make me suspicious. "How many books do you own?"
"Fewer than I used to." She followed the case through the cabin door while another pair of hands removed my socks. "And cleanliness isn't what makes something a book, Kai."
I'd cleared the shelf yesterday. Apparently, putting things on it again overnight had undermined the gesture. I took the socks from a waiting hand and shoved them into a drawer while Robin unpacked, arranging her books between two wooden supports I'd screwed into the shelf. She tested one with her thumb before putting the heavier volumes beside it.
Murdoch watched from her shoulder, where he'd installed himself shortly after breakfast. He'd known her for months, but six days of actually sharing the ship had apparently been enough to erase every cracker I'd ever bought him. When I offered my arm, he turned around and began tidying a feather.
"I paid for your breakfast." I left my arm there for another few seconds, preserving what remained of my dignity through persistence. Robin reached up to scratch beneath his beak, and the little bastard closed his eyes. "That's embarrassing. Have some self-respect."
"He seems comfortable." She lifted the folded newspaper he'd delivered, revealing two wanted posters tucked inside. "You might prefer these. They've remembered you."
My face stared up from beneath the word WANTED, still attached to that fucking epithet, but the number beneath it had changed enough to distract me. Two hundred and ten million berries. I took the poster, checked it again and felt a grin spreading despite myself. Eighty-five million more for one extremely productive evening.
Robin's new poster lay beside it. Eighty-five million, up from seventy-nine, with a warning identifying us as travelling associates. Apparently, being carried out of a hole in the palace courtyard hadn't been subtle enough. Some guard in Alubarna had almost certainly snitched, although I supposed expecting professional discretion from men I'd threatened to murder was asking a lot.
"Together, we're worth nearly three hundred million," I said, holding the posters side by side. "We should charge people to look at us."
Robin unfolded the paper. "They'd pay more for our heads. We could save them the inconvenience of transporting the rest." She said it as she reached for a piece of toast, and I slowly lowered both posters.
"It's breakfast, Robin." She took a bite, looking perfectly pleased with herself, so I sat beside her and stole the other half. Murdoch objected from her shoulder. Of course he fucking did.
The article made fascinating reading, mostly because I'd apparently spent months working for Crocodile without receiving a single wage. According to a statement supplied by the authorities, I'd been involved in his illegal operations before a violent dispute between us exposed evidence of his criminal activities. Alabasta's forces had secured the former Warlord, and Marine intervention had prevented further disorder.
His dismissal appeared halfway down the page in one dry sentence. Much more space was devoted to reassuring readers that the Government's other arrangements remained secure. Nothing about Pluton, nothing about the Poneglyph, and certainly nothing about me using their sponsored sand bastard to practise my long-distance jumping.
"I betrayed him," I read aloud. "That's impressive. He offered me a job and I punched him before we even discussed my benefits."
"It avoids explaining how long they supported a criminal operation," Robin said, drawing the paper closer. The report confirmed that Crocodile had been handed over to the Marines once his condition stabilised. Wherever they were keeping him temporarily, I'd have bet on Impel Down being the eventual destination. Probably Level Six, if my memory was worth anything; he seemed unlikely to enjoy the accommodation.
The official account hadn't stopped dockside gossip. Yesterday, a supplier had recognised me and quietly offered to deliver everything himself. His assistant had whispered something about Crocodile, then stopped when I looked over. People might argue over who'd betrayed whom, but they knew which of us had walked away.
Baroque Works was having a less profitable week. Robin had found one of its local offices abandoned, its records burned and its cashbox missing. At another, the man in charge had emptied the storehouse before anyone could tell him whose orders he was supposed to follow. She'd brought back two books she'd left there and declined to rescue the filing system.
"Some of them will keep operating," she said when I asked how much of the organisation remained. "They have money and useful contacts. They'll simply begin arguing over whose they are."
I pictured several of the supervisors I'd met trying to promote themselves, and wished them every possible inconvenience. Then I looked at the two posters again. A defeated Warlord, Nico Robin aboard my ship and a captain who kept asking about forbidden history; even I could see why the Government had stopped pricing me like a particularly destructive burglar.
We left Nanohana before noon. Robin secured her cases below while I handled the lines, and Murdoch supervised from the cabin roof without contributing anything billable. The Vesper's red sails filled, the harbour began slipping behind us, and I brought out the chart I'd bought with our supplies.
Robin found it spread beneath my hand when she returned. I'd marked our original route, crossed out part of it and drawn another line toward an island farther east. Beside it sat a small Eternal Pose, bought that morning from a merchant who'd needed considerable reassurance that I intended to pay.
"You changed our destination." She rested her fingertips beside the new line. "That's the island from the travel account."
"The observatory," I said, checking our clearance from a fishing boat. "You said they copied inscriptions from the older coastal settlements before some of them went underwater. Figured we'd have a look."
She'd mentioned it while we were sorting books the previous evening, almost as an aside. The account she'd lent me months ago claimed that copies had survived in the observatory's collection, although its author hadn't examined them. It was a lead, which seemed considerably more useful than continuing to complain about the stone in Alabasta.
"It may only be a few ordinary burial inscriptions," she said. "The collection might not even exist anymore. That account is old."
"Then we'll find that out." I moved her hand long enough to hold the chart down beneath a mug. "How many days do you want there?"
Robin looked at the Eternal Pose, then back at me. "I don't know yet."
"Alright. Tell me when you do." I turned the wheel a little, watching the fishing boat pass astern, while she stayed beside the chart. Eventually, she pulled out the chair and sat down, opening the travel account to a page she'd marked. For the next ten minutes, she read me considerably more about the observatory than she'd mentioned yesterday.
Then she looked up and asked why we were approaching the shoals.
"We aren't." I held up my left wrist, showing her the three needles of my Log Pose, then indicated the Eternal Pose secured beside the wheel. "I've got the bearing. I can feel it as well."
Robin stood and looked back toward the harbour. "The bow is pointing the right way. The current is carrying us sideways." She pointed out two channel markers that had been neatly separated a few minutes ago and were now almost overlapping. "You'll want more room before turning past that headland."
I looked at the markers, the shallow water beyond them and the line I'd drawn directly across an inconvenient patch of coast. Months of travelling the Grand Line, a built-in sense of direction and three separate needles on my wrist, yet apparently I still needed adult supervision when the water moved sideways.
"I would've noticed," I mumbled, correcting our course. The Vesper came around smoothly while Robin reached past me to shift the chart out of the spray.
"After we ran aground?" She studied the rocks ahead. "You could probably pull us free. Although if the hull opened, we'd have to stuff your arse into the hole until we reached port."
I stared at her instead of the water, which nearly undermined my entire defence. "You've thought about that far too quickly."
"I like having a plan." She smiled and tapped the channel on the chart. "This way first. Then you can point yourself at the island."
By early afternoon, we'd cleared the coastal currents and settled onto our new course. Robin had left a note beside the wheel with the next correction written on it, underlined twice. I considered objecting, remembered the proposed hull repair and decided there were worse indignities.
I found her at the table with three books open, a blank sheet beside them and my borrowed travel account weighted beneath her elbow. Murdoch sat near her cup. I moved him six inches to reclaim my usual seat; he immediately walked back and pecked my wrist.
"Traitor," I muttered, settling for the other chair. Robin took my right hand and turned it palm-down on the paper before I could ask what she was doing.
"You promised to help with my research," she said, studying the wheel across my knuckles. "I thought I might return the favour. Explain the adaptation again, without using the phrase 'it sorts itself out.'"
"That was a very efficient explanation." She waited with her pencil poised until I sighed. "Any and all phenomena. That's what it seems capable of adapting to, provided I last long enough for it to happen. Heat, pressure, poison, being dried out by an overgrown handbag... Sometimes I get tougher. Sometimes it changes how I interact with whatever's causing the problem."
She made a short note, then tapped the back of my hand. "And the changes fade?"
"Some do. I keep enough that familiar things usually stop being a problem much faster the next time. Some of the growth stays too. I call it the threshold" I flexed my fingers against the page. "I used to think everything went away. Then my clothes stopped fitting."
Robin glanced at my shoulders before writing again. "That still doesn't account for the body you transform into. We agreed it was probably a Mythical Zoan, but you've been describing what it does as though that tells us what it is."
"I know what a shark does without needing its full legal name." I leaned over to read her notes, and she moved her pencil aside.
"You can recognise a shark because it has a particular body. Yours does too." She gestured toward my forearm. "The same blade, the same enlarged hands, the same structures around your face. You've reproduced them under different circumstances. What happens when you produce the blade now?"
I moved my arm clear of the table and let the familiar change spread beneath the skin. Pale flesh rose along my forearm, the wrappings settled and the blade extended beside my wrist. Robin shifted her chair for a better look, sketching its attachment while Murdoch sensibly moved away from the edge.
"Nothing's attacking you," she continued. "You aren't becoming better at surviving a new injury. You're assuming part of a body your fruit already gives you access to. The adaptation may be the creature's ability, but that doesn't mean every transformation is an adaptation."
I'd treated it that way whenever I thought about training, even though I'd reached roughly the same conclusion months ago. She'd taken my collection of observations, complaints and destroyed clothing and found the question I'd kept stepping around: what else belonged to that body before anything hit it?
I knew Mahoraga. I didn't know what name this world had given a Devil Fruit built around him, or whether its stories contained anything useful about the parts I still couldn't control. Robin was already writing down which features appeared together, leaving gaps where my answers hadn't been good enough.
An intelligent woman calmly explaining the holes in my understanding was apparently a specific fucking weakness of mine. I rested my chin on my free hand and watched her work until she glanced up.
"Kai." Her pencil hovered above the page. "Have you ever lost an organ?"
That pulled my attention back fairly quickly. "No. Why are we starting there?"
"We aren't. It would help distinguish healing from replacing something entirely." She looked at my blade, then at my chest. "We could open you up and watch, although cleaning the table afterwards would be unpleasant."
"You were much less disturbing when you were employed." I let the blade recede and pulled my arm back before she could start measuring anything else. Robin laughed quietly, then crossed out something on the page. I leaned forward immediately. "What did you just cross out?"
"A question you've answered." She covered the line with her hand and turned another sheet toward me. "Draw the fruit. After that, I'd like you to describe the complete transformation, including everything you haven't managed to reproduce."
I borrowed her pencil. My pear looked diseased, and my attempt at the larger form had proportions that would've embarrassed a primary-school art class, but Robin kept asking useful questions and somehow made both drawings less awful. By sunset, she'd filled several pages and started a list of books to look for at our next stop.
When I returned from checking our heading, she'd unpacked the last case. Her notes lay beside the observatory account, and the socks I'd abandoned earlier had been folded on my bed. I brought another lamp to the table and sat down while she moved her books to make room.
Murdoch climbed onto her shoulder again. I gave him a long look, then reached for the pencil. Apparently, I was going to have to win my own fucking bird back, but first Robin wanted to know how many spokes I remembered above my head.
…
End of Chapter!
Word Count - 2379
a/n -
And we are officially out of Alabasta! ╰(°▽°)╯
This chapter was always meant to be a bit quieter after everything that happened with Crocodile. I didn't really want to immediately throw Kai and Robin into another massive conflict when, technically, these two have only just agreed to travel together. Robin has now actually moved onto the Vesper, her books are everywhere, she's stealing his bird, and Kai is apparently still using bookshelves as sock storage.
So, basically, the crew is thriving.
I really wanted this chapter to establish what travelling with Robin is actually going to look like before we get into the bigger stuff. One thing I really don't want is for Robin joining Kai to just mean she stands around until a Poneglyph appears. Her entire reason for coming with him is their agreement surrounding the True History, so I wanted Kai changing course toward the observatory to happen almost immediately.
He made her a promise, and he fully intends to keep it.
Even if the lead turns out to be complete shit.
That was also why I liked the little moment where he asks how many days she wants there and she doesn't know. There's no timetable. Kai isn't dragging her around on some predetermined quest where she gets three hours to inspect the archaeology before they move onto the next plot point. If she thinks there's something there, they stay until she's finished.
Of course, Robin being Robin, she somehow managed to turn this arrangement around on him and start researching his weird ass instead. XD
I've been waiting for someone intelligent to properly interrogate Kai about his Devil Fruit for a while now because, respectfully, Kai himself is a terrible scientist. His research method for most of his life has basically been:
"What happens if I hurt myself with this?"
And then doing it.
Robin is looking at the exact same information from a completely different perspective. Kai understands the ability extremely well by now. He knows how adaptation behaves; he knows about thresholds, retained growth, transformation, and so on.
What he still doesn't properly understand is what the hell he actually turns into.
That distinction between the adaptation and the creature possessing adaptation is going to become increasingly important.
I'm not going to dump the answer immediately because I think discovering the fruit's true nature should develop naturally through the story, especially now that Robin is around and they have access to the Grand Line.
There are books, myths, old records, Devil Fruit encyclopaedias, islands with their own religions and folklore, and obviously a certain archaeologist who is VERY good at digging through shit that the World Government would rather stay buried.
So yes.
The Devil Fruit lore is beginning. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Also, apparently Robin's first contribution to the scientific process is:
"Have you ever lost an organ?"
Wonderful woman. Very safe travelling companion.
The bounty stuff at the beginning was also something I wanted to finally address. 210,000,000 berries for Kai and 85,000,000 for Robin puts them at nearly 300 million combined already, which is fucking hilarious considering there are literally two people on this ship and one unpaid bird.
More importantly, I wanted the Government's version of Alabasta to feel like exactly that: their version.
Crocodile was one of their Warlords. Admitting that they sponsored a pirate who was destabilising an entire kingdom while searching for an Ancient Weapon would be slightly inconvenient, so naturally the official story becomes considerably cleaner. Kai was involved with Crocodile, there was a falling-out, evidence came to light, the Marines handled the situation, please stop asking questions.
Nothing suspicious here (￣y▽,￣)╭
And Baroque Works itself isn't just going to vanish because Crocodile lost. He built an entire criminal organisation with money, contacts, personnel and infrastructure spread across the Grand Line. Some people are running. Some are stealing whatever isn't nailed down. Some are probably already figuring out how to make themselves the new boss.
Basically, Crocodile got arrested and everybody immediately started looting the company office.
Corporate culture.
I also just really enjoyed writing Kai and Robin together here.
Their dynamic is becoming one of my favourite parts of this arc because Robin's humour works extremely well against Kai's bullshit. She's not Nami, so I don't want their interactions to feel like I simply swapped one woman aboard the ship for another. Robin is older, quieter, considerably harder to embarrass, and occasionally says something horrifying with the same tone somebody would use to ask to pass the sugar.
Kai, unfortunately, appears to like this.
And finally...
Murdoch. You disloyal feathered FUCK.
Kai feeds this animal for YEARS and Robin scratches his neck a few times and suddenly he has a new mother.
There will be consequences.
Anyway, I'm curious what you guys thought about this one because we're now properly moving into the Kai + Robin portion of the arc.
What do you think of their dynamic so far? Do you like Robin actively helping investigate Kai's Devil Fruit? Any theories on how the One Piece world might actually recognise or record whatever his fruit is based on? What do you think about the 210 million bounty, too high, too low, or about what you expected after Crocodile?
And most importantly, how long do you think it takes before Robin completely takes over the Vesper and Kai becomes a guest on his own ship?
Because Murdoch has already chosen a side. Traitor.
As always, thank you guys for reading, voting, commenting and throwing theories at me. I read basically everything even when I don't immediately reply, and some of you have been suspiciously good at guessing things lately.
Stop that.
See you next chapter! (￣▽￣)ノ
Bye bye.