To the Royal Capital

It seemed Jaguar D. Saul was too conspicuous. With only one giant on the entire island, racing all the way to the eastern shore, it was hard not to catch the attention of his old friend Kuzan.

"No problem!!"

Jaguar D. Saul shouted and charged like a madman at Kuzan, who was approaching across the sea on foot, freezing the water beneath him.

After running some distance, Ruidio looked at the warship ahead and said quickly, "Olvia, swim to that warship and climb aboard. Even if you have to turn yourself in and confess, buy yourself some time. Whatever you do, make sure you're still alive when the buster call on Ohara is over! Do you understand?"

Olvia said dejectedly, "What good will a few more days do? The Marines will execute me anyway."

It's no use to you, but it's useful to me, sis.

Ruidio swung her hard and flung her far out into the sea. "Swim! Olvia, swim!" he shouted.

Robin tried to follow, but Ruidio grabbed her. "You think I don't want to swim over there with her? I told you, we only have one life each. I keep feeling like there might be a problem if we go into the sea now!"

"What problem?" Unable to break free, Robin had no choice but to use her Flower-Flower Fruit powers. She sprouted several arms above her mother, who was swimming desperately toward the warship, and an eye of her own grew in each palm, allowing her to watch in every direction for her mother.

But just then, those eyes saw the ice spreading rapidly across the sea from Jaguar D. Saul's direction. At nearly a hundred meters per second, it swept over the water around her mother, Olvia, and froze it solid.

"That kind of problem." Ruidio was speechless. Fortunately, he had taken precautions.

[Nico Olvia has died. This mission has failed. Returning shortly...]

Alabasta, an uninhabited stretch of desert, beside the Banana Crocodile carriage—

Ruidio and Robin vanished without warning, then suddenly reappeared three seconds later. The Banana Crocodile stared in bewilderment. What were these two humans playing at?

Robin's pupils trembled. The image of her mother frozen in the sea still lingered before her eyes. Her legs gave way, and she sank onto the sand.

Despite the scorching heat, her hands and feet were icy cold, and her whole body trembled.

"This is your 'psychotherapy'?"

Robin gave a dejected, bitter smile. "It doesn't seem to be working very well."

"I have one last trick. Looks like I have no choice but to use it." Ruidio tipped his head back and sighed. "Even then, it'll depend on whether Kizaru is willing to do us a favor."

"Kizaru?"

Robin caught on. "You're going to do it again... What kind of ability is this? If it's just some kind of illusion, why did you say neither of us could die in there? Could that place actually be real?"

"That's exactly what we're going to test next."

Smiling, Ruidio flicked another gold coin to her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and selected mission deployment.

"Are you my mama?"

In front of the Tree of Knowledge, eight-year-old Robin cried out at the back of her mother, who was being led away by three men in black suits. Suddenly, as if by some unseen force, the figure of a twenty-five-year-old Nico Robin descended from above. With a sense of warped time and space, it flowed entirely into her slender body in an instant.

Eight-year-old Robin's gaze changed abruptly, and she saw the scene through twenty-five-year-old Robin's eyes.

"Sorry for the trouble, but could you clear the area first?"

This time, Ruidio pushed through the crowd from another direction and walked toward her.

"..."

Robin stared at him, then wasted no words. She crossed her arms and used her Flower-Flower Fruit powers.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The three Cipher Pol No. 9 agents leading Olvia away were once again brought down by joint locks.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!...

Numerous arms sprouted on the black-suited men guarding the Ohara scholars, and they quickly went down.

Thud, thud, thud!

The anxious Jaguar D. Saul arrived as expected, only for a coin to come flying toward him. "Catch!" The unfamiliar young man beside Robin and Olvia had thrown it. He hurriedly caught it on instinct.

[You have hired Jaguar D. Saul for approximately 1 hour]

[You have hired Nico Olvia for approximately 1 hour]

Ruidio pressed a coin into Olvia's hand, then waved Jaguar D. Saul over.

With one hand against Jaguar D. Saul's lower leg and the other arm around the bewildered Olvia, he said to Robin, "Grab hold of me."

Robin stared blankly as she reached out and placed a hand on his chest.

[You have selected return]

Once again, they returned to Alabasta's desert beneath the blazing sun. But this time, three seconds after their disappearance, it was not just Ruidio and Robin who appeared beside the Banana Crocodile carriage. Olvia was there too, her long white hair flowing down her back.

But Jaguar D. Saul, the giant, was nowhere to be seen.

Nor did Ruidio's Ohara mission show as completed.

Chapter 33: To the Royal Capital

[Chapter-opening serial: Bonney Basking in the Sun 9: "Who told her to be so beautiful? (heart, heart)"]

[The fishermen had assumed the two would deeply resent the pirates who attacked them. Instead, both the fat and thin survivors broke into lovestruck smiles and repeatedly waved their hands in denial. Question marks appeared over the fishermen's heads, while an ellipsis trailed from the queen dowager.]

**********

[Mission in progress: Why Did Mama Die That Day]

[Mission objective: Ensure Nico Olvia survives the buster call.]

[Client: Nico Robin]

[Distance: Near (deployment available)]

[Estimated difficulty: ★★★★★]

"..."

Ruidio looked at the mission description on the system panel, then at Nico Robin beside him, whose face was full of shock, and Nico Olvia, who looked just as stunned.

Was this fucking system broken?

This didn't count as "ensuring Nico Olvia survived the buster call"?

Did it have to be the Olvia being shelled on Ohara who survived the buster call inside that "dungeon"? Did it have to be so damn rigid?

"Are you... Robin?!"

Olvia stared in disbelief at the twenty-five-year-old Robin before her. One moment, her own daughter had been an eight-year-old girl, and the next, she had become a grown woman. Judging by her appearance, she looked almost eighty or ninety percent like Olvia herself, who was in her thirties!

"Mama..." Robin's chest rose and fell. Shock and excitement mingled, her emotions surging so violently that she could barely breathe. She gripped her mother's arm tightly and looked in disbelief at Ruidio, who seemed rather downcast.

Ruidio said, "Don't look at me like that. If I'm not mistaken, she really is your mother, alive. I accidentally brought her 'out' for real."

Accidentally?

Robin smiled through her tears.

"I... where exactly is this..."

Still reeling, Olvia realized she was becoming a little incoherent. She took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself, then clasped the hands of the woman who looked so much like her and asked gently, "Are you really Robin? Where are we now? What happened to Ohara? And who is this young man? What on earth happened? Wasn't Jaguar D. Saul with us? Where did he go?"

"..." Robin did not answer immediately. She looked at Ruidio questioningly.

Ruidio waved a hand, indicating she should go ahead.

Holding her mother's hand, Robin answered softly, "Mama, I'm Robin. I... what happened to Ohara was seventeen years ago."

At last, she could no longer hold back the tears streaming down her cheeks. Her nose stinging, she said, "His name is Ruidio. He's... my friend. He used some kind of ability to take me back to Ohara on that day and bring you into 'reality,' Mama."

"It's been seventeen years?!"

Olvia struggled to process the shocking news: one moment, Ohara had been in the middle of being destroyed, and the next, she was being told it had happened seventeen years ago.

"Then Ohara, and the doctor and the others..."

"They disappeared along with Ohara, and so did you, Mama." Robin wiped away her tears with her fingers. "Even now, when I'm holding your hand, my memories of what happened to Ohara still haven't changed."

The latter part was clearly meant for Ruidio.

Ruidio said, "Are you worried that, since your memories haven't changed, the mother in front of you might only be a projection borrowed from history, a temporary existence who'll eventually disappear?"

"Will she?" Robin asked worriedly.

"How should I know?" Ruidio said. "It's my first time too. So for now, just cherish the time you have with her."

"..."

Olvia felt no fear at the possibility that she might disappear at any moment. She simply stroked the hair of the daughter who had grown into a woman, sorrow in her eyes.

Robin held her hand and smiled. "It's all right, Mama. I've been doing well."

"So, Ruidio," she said, changing the subject, "Jaguar D. Saul got a coin from you too. Why didn't he 'come out' with us?"

"Let's talk about that after we get aboard! First, we're going somewhere."

Ruidio pointed to Robin's Banana Crocodile carriage beside them.

"Where?" Robin asked.

"The royal capital, Alubarna."

Among the species of Alabasta, a desert kingdom, Banana Crocodiles were among the fastest at traveling across the desert. Even with three humans on its back, it crossed the rolling dunes as if on level ground, racing eastward and throwing great clouds of sand into the sky along the way.

"The royal capital, Alubarna? I remember that's in Alabasta..."

Olvia gazed outside. Endless yellow sand stretched in every direction.

Robin drew her legs in as much as she could and said, "Two years ago, I found a Poneglyph with information about the Ancient Weapon 'Pluton,' right here in this ancient desert kingdom..."

The single-person carriage had originally been made for Robin alone, and with three people squeezed inside, it was extremely cramped. The temperature had also risen considerably, and they were soon covered in sweat.

Olvia said solemnly, "Robin, there's no way Dr. Clover and the others were researching any Ancient Weapon! That was nothing but slander from the Five Elders."

"I know, Mama." Robin pressed her lips together. "I searched so desperately for those stones because I wanted to prove just that—to prove the World Government was wrong, and that Ohara wasn't full of demons who wanted to resurrect an Ancient Weapon."

Olvia tightened her grip on Robin's hand and sighed. "Robin, you don't need to burden yourself with such a heavy mission."

Ruidio said, "Without that mission, she would've thrown herself into the sea and ended it all long ago."

Olvia felt a pang in her heart, but could only sigh.

Robin said, "Ruidio, Jaguar D. Saul..."

"Before I brought your mother out, I'd already been to 'that Ohara' many times."

Ruidio said calmly, "I tried to bring your younger self 'out' the same way, as well as World Government agents I ran into along the way, but they all failed. Only this time, bringing your mother out, did it work. What do you think the difference is?"

Olvia pondered. "The difference is that Robin and those government agents are still alive in this 'future world,' while I'm already dead?"

"Then that means..."

Robin's voice trembled slightly. "Jaguar D. Saul is actually still alive?"