I Sell Gacha Jars in One Piece

Ohara. For more than ten years, it had lived in Robin's mind the way only a lost home can, somewhere between a longing and a wound that never fully closed.

It was where she had come from. It was also where her nightmare had begun.

After the Buster Call, the island had been struck from the charts entirely. The World Government feared what the Void Century might reveal, feared the exposure of its own crimes, and so it had done what governments do when they wish to bury the truth. It had found someone else to carry the blame, and Robin had spent the years since running beneath the weight of it.

"Is this really Ohara?" Lily stared out at the scorched, overgrown silence ahead of them, her voice small. "This is where Robin Sister came from?"

"It is," Amon said, resting a hand on top of her head. "The Government ordered it wiped from the maps to keep the truth about the Void Century buried. They burned the island and handed the guilt to Robin so no one would look too closely at what they'd done. She's been running ever since, with every person she trusted eventually turning on her for the bounty on her head."

Lily listened to all of this with wide, serious eyes. Then she looked up at him.

"Then we have to be good to Robin Sister. We have to make sure she feels at home with us."

"Agreed," Amon said simply, and brought the ship in.

...

They came ashore into quiet.

The island had the particular stillness of a place that had once held great noise and now held none of it. Scorched earth had given way over the years to creeping overgrowth, nature slowly absorbing what violence had tried to erase. The great tree still stood at the center of the island, ancient and unmoved by what had happened around it, its roots deeper than anything the Government had managed to burn.

"Thank you, Mister" Robin said, walking beside him. "For knowing all of that. For understanding what it actually was."

"Don't mention it. You're on my ship now. That makes us the same kind of people."

He smiled sideways at her. "And while we're at it, you can drop the formalities. Amon is fine. Or Captain, if you want to keep things professional."

Robin repeated both options to herself quietly, and then smiled, and for a moment she looked considerably younger than she was. "I think I'll decide depending on the situation."

"Fair enough. Come on, let's have a look around."

...

They wandered the island in a loose group. Lily kept close to Robin, curious about everything, while Amon walked slightly ahead, taking in the ruins and the overgrown paths between them. The Tree of Knowledge was as impressive in reality as in any account he had ever read of it.

Eventually Robin stopped.

She had gone still in front of a large mound at the edge of a clearing, a burial mound, with a stone marker standing at its head. She stood reading the inscription without moving for a long moment.

The name carved there was Jaguar D. Saul.

"Someone came here," she said quietly. "Someone erected this for him."

"That's the Marine Vice Admiral who protected Robin Sister, isn't it?" Lily said. Amon had explained everything to her on the walk over, and she had listened to every word of it. "The one who died keeping her safe."

"Yes." Robin's voice had gone very thin. "He protected me. He was the reason I was able to leave."

Her eyes were full.

"Nico Robin. I'll say this much. You have at least some decency in you. Saul wasn't wrong about you."

The voice came from directly behind the burial mound.

A tall figure stepped out from around it. He wore a white suit vest over a deep blue shirt, a dark eyepatch over one eye, and carried himself with the unhurried ease of a man who had never once felt the need to rush anything in his life.

Robin's blood ran cold.

"Aokiji."

She knew that face. It was Aokiji who had been there the day Ohara burned. It was Aokiji who had let her go, and who had told her in the same breath that if she ever used what she knew to cause harm, he would come and deal with her himself.

Amon turned at the name and got a good look at the figure emerging from behind the stone. The details matched everything he knew about the man in an instant.

"So it is," he said, more to himself than anyone.

"That's right." Aokiji's gaze settled on Robin. "I have to say, I'm surprised you had the nerve to come back here. My good friend Saul died because of you. You're a woman who brings destruction to everything around her. Why aren't you hiding somewhere in the underworld where you belong, instead of coming back to this place?"

He let that land. Then:

"Are you looking for another island to curse?"

His words were sharp enough to cut, and Robin flinched under them as though they had. The color drained from her face. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

"I... I'll leave. Right now, I'll just..."

Amon's eyes moved from Robin's expression to Aokiji's face, and his brow drew together slightly.

"Ha. You Navy types really do have a way with words. Walk up and start handing out verdicts before you've even said hello. Very efficient." He stepped forward. "I know Robin's story better than most. Your Government wasn't protecting anyone when it ordered that Buster Call. You burned this island because you were afraid of what the scholars here had found. You silenced them, and then you took an eight-year-old girl and made her carry the crime for it." He tilted his head. "Quite the definition of justice you people work with."

Aokiji's expression shifted. A slight furrow appeared between his brows.

"This doesn't concern you," Robin said quickly, stepping forward before Aokiji could respond. "I'll go. Please don't..."

"You're my crew, Robin. That makes it very much my concern." Amon glanced back at her with a small, settled smile. "Relax. He won't win."

Then he turned back to Aokiji and crooked one finger in a lazy beckoning gesture.

"Come on then. Let's see what you've got."

Aokiji regarded him for a moment with an expression of mild curiosity. Then he looked at Robin.

"You've found yourself quite the companion."

He exhaled. A pale mist left his lips, and from it a great bird of ice took shape and launched itself into the air above them in a single motion, its wings spreading wide as the temperature around them plummeted in an instant.

The cold came like a wall.