Chapter 7

The captain's life was in danger.

This would normally not be a problem for the fierce and deadly captain of the Straw Hat Pirates. He was a ridiculously strong boy who had beaten the likes of Crocodile and Don Krieg with his nearly indestructible rubber body and indomitable spirit.

Yet even a rubber body could bruise when a certain navigator was involved.

"LUFFY! Tell me why we almost died. Tell me that you had a good reason for taking the ship off course."

Long Nose-kun said tentatively, "Er, Nami? Maybe he could tell you if you stopped throttling him."

The captain whose face was turning purple nodded frantically in agreement. The navigator released him with a reluctant sigh.

"Well?"

The look on the captain's face said that he thought the answer was obvious. He replied, "It was a frog that could do the breaststroke! We had to chase it!"

The navigator put a hand to her face and groaned. "Why? Why did we have to chase it?"

"I wanted to eat it!"

With an inarticulate cry of rage, the navigator grabbed the younger boy by his red, short-sleeved shirt and began shaking him like a rag doll. She cried, "The ship was nearly run over by a sea train! We were almost smashed to bits!"

"Hey, I didn't know there was going to be a sea train there! I didn't even know they existed before today! Did you know?"

Robin winced. Trying to deal rationally with the navigator while she was in her current mood was not likely to be a successful venture.

And she was proven to be correct when the navigator stormed off leaving a mass of bruises writhing on the deck.

Robin gently nudged the vaguely human form with her foot and asked pleasantly, "Are you feeling alright, captain?"

The captain gave her a shaky thumbs-up.

Robin smiled. There was something awfully amusing about this strong-willed pirate falling so easily before the navigator's wrath. In fact, she seemed to be the only person who could keep him in line. The two of them seemed to have a rather strange relationship. Robin had noticed that however much the navigator argued with and berated the captain for his reckless plans, she would defer to his decisions once they were made without further argument. The level of respect and trust she usually showed him were completely at odds with her attitude that their captain was a complete idiot.

The navigator hated pirates. This was an undisputed fact. The incident in which all the crew members except Robin had lost their memories had shown that to be true. Yet the captain had somehow won that girl's undying loyalty even if she tended to show that loyalty in a rather painful fashion.

In the final analysis, their relationship was not that much different from their counterparts on other pirate ships. The captain would set a course and the navigator would do her best to ensure that the ship would get there. They were a team, and no number of clashes would change that.

Robin found the navigator in their quarters furiously scribbling on a sheet of paper and muttering to herself.

"That brainless moron! You'd think being on the Grand Sea would give him some sense of caution, but no-o-o-o. What does a man too stupid to fear death need with caution? He probably doesn't even know the meaning of the word!

"And why am I the only one with any common sense? I'm surrounded by idiots. Why do I always have to be the one to point out that we shouldn't be trying to sail into the sky or getting into Davy Back fights? We're all going to end up at the bottom of the sea at this rate."

"Well, we have traveled in the sky. Why not the bottom of the ocean?" Robin asked, leaning against the door to the room with crossed arms.

The navigator smiled wearily at her. "Knowing Luffy, I wouldn't be surprised at all. The guy's like a six year old. Honestly, chasing after some giant frog."

"Don't you think you're being a bit hard on the captain? There's no way he could have known about that train device," Robin said.

"I know that he couldn't have known." The redhead looked vaguely guilty for a moment. "It's just… it's his attitude that bothers me. He doesn't seem to care that we could have all died for such a stupid reason. All our dreams would have been gone just like that."

"You know he cares."

"I do. I know that. He could show some remorse at least. I wish he'd think more before launching us on another harebrained adventure. I don't like being the bad guy, but if I don't pound some sense into his head, he'll never learn anything." She groaned. "Why is our captain such an idiot?"

Robin had often heard similar laments from the cook, the swordsman, and the rest of the crew. Even the doctor, the captain's biggest fan, sometimes found the rubber boy's antics annoying. She was by no means immune from this sentiment. As a woman who valued rationality and logical thinking, she had her moments of frustration with the captain's often incomprehensible actions.

But those moments usually passed very quickly. That was because Robin had something the navigator lacked, which was experience. She was used to being on ships where the captains took great pleasure in beating and terrorizing their crews. Men shot dead for not delivering the rum quickly enough. Women 'broken in' before they would be allowed to join the crew. Robin was able to avoid such fates because of her powers and her reputation as a woman not to be messed with.

She didn't imagine that the navigator had not seen similar incidents. The long nose had let it slip that the girl had been forced to work for a vicious fishman since she was a child, and that she was skilled at manipulating her way onto pirate ships in order to rob them later. But despite their similar life experiences dealing with pirates, Robin had, by virtue of her age, seen more barbaric behavior.

Deep in her cynical soul, the navigator wanted to believe that individuals of good character like Monkey D. Luffy were more common than she had been led to believe, and that was why she sometimes took him for granted.

Robin knew better.

"I have known many brainless captains on the sea," Robin said. "But I have known very few who had a heart large enough to make up for that deficiency."

An amazing change came over the navigator. Where only moments before the girl had stress lines etched into her forehead, she now wore a gentle expression. It was a smile that somehow managed to convey amusement, chagrin, and a sense of wonder. She said fondly, "Yeah, he's an idiot but if he wasn't one then I probably wouldn't be here now. Luffy's a glutton, a moron, and the most aggravating person I know, but I owe him… everything."

And in those words Robin had the answer to why the crew hadn't long ago mutinied and thrown the captain overboard.

"You can always make me feel better, Robin. I'd go crazy if I was the only woman onboard."

"I was under the impression that you managed rather well up until the princess joined your crew."

The navigator laughed. "It was like living in a madhouse. Don't get me wrong, I love the guys, but I just can't talk to them about some stuff. Mister Tough Guy Swordsman's solution to anything is to slice it to pieces. Luffy wouldn't understand and besides, he's the person I'm complaining about half the time! Chopper doesn't know that much about human interaction. Sanji's sweet, but he can be smothering and too emotional. It's nice having another woman to divide his attention with."

"Uh, you're welcome?"

The navigator smiled. "Would you believe that Usopp was the closest thing I had to a girl friend before Vivi came onboard?"

Robin thought about that and couldn't help laughing at that image that came to mind of the boy in hair curlers and a nightie. She then asked, "And you feel that you can talk to me?"

"Definitely. At first, you were kinda scary and I resented you a little because I missed Vivi. I know you weren't trying to replace her or anything… Yeah, it was stupid, but that's how I felt at the time."

"What changed your mind?" Robin asked, genuinely curious. It was obvious that she was on much friendlier terms with the other girl than when they first met, but she had always wondered what had won the younger girl over.

"You're so… poised. It doesn't seem like anything bothers you. You always seem to know what to do. Even when you were working with Crocodile, I respected how tough you were. You remind me of Luffy but obviously with more intelligence and self-control. You never give up no matter how bad things get. You're everything I want to be someday."

The navigator drifted off into silence, but it was not a natural silence but a pensive one that caused Robin to prompt, "But?"

The other girl squirmed around in her chair. She said hesitantly, "You're always smiling, but you're not always happy. I'm always talking to you about my problems, but you never tell me about yours. I wish…"

Robin sensed an open invitation floating around in the air, and she wished that she could take it. She had admitted to herself that she loved the Straw Hats, but some habits were too hard to break. She would not burden others with her problems. So she said nothing.

The moment passed, and the navigator turned back to her mapmaking, muttering, "Never mind. It's none of my business."

Robin lingered by the doorway for a minute longer then turned and headed back to the deck. Her mind was in turmoil. The navigator was extraordinarily perceptive, but that was no surprise. The girl reminded her of herself in many ways. She knew what it was like to have to hide one's true self and to constantly be on guard against betrayal while she was planning to commit a betrayal herself.

But the navigator didn't have the world after her. She had found happiness in a rowdy and extremely strange group of pirates. She didn't have to hide who she was anymore. She no longer had to constantly look over her shoulder, fearing who and what lied over the horizon.

Robin sometimes envied the younger girl's freedom, but she did not resent it. She wanted to preserve it. She wanted her to finish making her map of the world. She wanted the captain to become the Pirate King, for the cook to achieve his quest for a mythical sea, for the swordsman to reach the peak of his profession, for the doctor to become a great healer, and for the brave warrior of the sea to go home to his Kaya laden with stories that would not be lies.

She wanted her friends to be happy. She wondered what Saulo would have thought about that.

A few weeks later…

Robin watched with amusement as the doctor ran toward the bookstore, babbling with unrestrained glee. She slowly followed after him so that she could take in the glorious sights around her.

Water 7 was truly an architectural wonder. Robin made a mental note to track down a historian and ask about the history of the city. There probably wouldn't be any Poneglyph connection, but discussing history for its own sake was still one of her passions in life.

She took in a deep breath of fresh air and slowly released it, feeling the tension drain from her body as she did so. She resumed her motion already thinking of ways to tease the doctor for leaving her behind. Robin barely noticed the man in the strange cloak and mask that walked past her heading in the opposite direction.

"C-P-9."

The shock reverberated through her body causing her body to freeze up almost instantly. Robin couldn't breathe or even think. In just three syllables her new life had ended.

Even though she knew that it was inevitable, even though she knew that they would catch up with her some day, Robin could not comprehend what was happening to her. The man, no, the agent was speaking and she was nodding, but she would not have been able to repeat what he said if her life depended on it. It was taking all her energy simply not to break down in despair. But she wasn't surprised at this turn of events. She had always known that happiness was not possible for someone like her.

Her first impulse was to run. She was an expert at escaping. She had done it before, and she could do it again. So why did she hesitate?

Because she knew CP9's first move would be to capture the Straw Hats and interrogate them for any information they might have about where she would go. Never mind that she would have never confided such things to her crewmates. Luffy and the others were strong, but even they couldn't stand up to the might of the World Government.

The choice before her was very simple. She could allow her friends to die in her stead, or she could stop running and submit to her fate. Her decision was obvious, but what she hadn't expected was how easy her choice would be. Sacrificing herself for those six? In a heartbeat.

As she followed the agent down an alley, Robin felt no fear. She felt a peace that she hadn't felt in years. She felt relief at not having to run any longer and a sense of satisfaction that she would finally accomplish something of worth in her life. If someone was to ask her why she was willing to allow herself to die for a group of people she barely knew, she would have replied that there was one thing she did know. Any one of that group would have done the same for her.

Because they were nakama.

THE END

Author's Note: I found Robin to be one of the most intriguing characters of One Piece and I wanted to write a short character piece from her point of view. Somehow it grew from there to encompass the other Straw Hats. I have decided to end here because I'd reached the point in Robin's character development that I wanted to reach, and because I would just be rehashing the Water 7 and Enies Lobby arcs if I continued. I could not hope to improve on those emotionally moving parts of the One Piece series. This was a joy to write. I hope you enjoyed the ride.