Wait, what transformation??? / Nico Robin, I've already reserved you

Dr. Clover hadn't expected everyone's attention to turn to his hair.

A few minutes later, the grinning crowd pressed Dr. Clover into a chair and quickly shaved his hair down to a close-cropped buzz cut. An Ohara female scholar looked at Clover's new hairstyle, which she had never seen before, and laughed so hard she couldn't straighten up.

"It's chilly." Clover rubbed his head. It felt so prickly.

Cobra, Vivi, and Olvia couldn't help laughing. Robin smiled softly, but when she turned around, she discovered that Ruidio had quietly walked away.

She whispered a word to her mother and followed him.

One last time, one last time!

Ruidio opened the system's mission interface and quickly found Robin's five-star mission, intending to make one last... or perhaps second-to-last attempt.

If this doesn't work again, don't make me slap Heavenly Restriction Tyrant on Olvia!

[You have chosen to deploy]

Chapter 38: Wait, what transformation???

Seventeen years ago, West Blue, Ohara—

In front of the enormous Tree of Knowledge, the scholars had been detained by agents in black suits. A frail little black-haired girl pushed her way out of the crowd and cried out to the long, white-haired woman being led away:

"Are you... my mother?"

The little girl wept as though desperately trying to cling to her last shred of hope. "It's me! I'm Robin! I've grown up. Do you still remember me? I've been waiting for you to come back... I've been studying really hard... Please don't leave me all alone anymore..."

He was lucky this time; the random deployment had brought him to a spot nearby.

Ruidio watched as Olvia broke down and sank to the ground amid Robin's heart-rending cries.

Boom, he said silently to himself.

Almost at the same time, a cannonball flew in from far beyond the island and landed with a boom!! near the Cipher Pol No. 9 agents escorting Olvia.

Spandine no longer had any time to worry about the government's criminal. Cursing, he took his men and fled.

Olvia was able to reunite with the daughter she hadn't seen in years.

Ruidio glanced northwest. Jaguar D. Saul was on his way.

He wasted no time. Before Saul arrived, he used Soru, one of the Six Powers, incorporating the strengths of Kuro's Silent Step. He silently reached Olvia's side as though he had nearly teleported, then delivered a swift chop to her neck.

Olvia's tear-streaked vision went black, and she lost consciousness.

How strange.

Ignoring the horrified Ohara scholars, Ruidio tucked Olvia under his arm and ran north, musing to himself. He had already taken Olvia, Clover, and the others "out." They were alive and well, flesh and blood, no different from having been brought back to life.

But now that he had returned to this mission scenario, the same Olvia was still here, repeating the "historical events"...

"Mom! Mom!!!"

The little girl's piercing screams rang out behind him.

"..."

Ruidio looked back as he ran. Robin was chasing him barefoot as though she had gone mad. She tripped over a tree root and took several hard tumbles, but paid no attention to the blood streaming down her head as she desperately chased the bad man who had taken her mother.

But how could she possibly keep up with Ruidio?

In just a few blinks, Robin could no longer see her mother. Cannon fire rumbled in her ears, and darkness stretched out ahead of her.

But Ruidio could still see her.

Perhaps it was because Olvia and the others he had taken "out" were truly living people of flesh and blood... This time, when Ruidio entered the mission, he found that he could no longer regard these people as simple NPCs.

Looking at the little girl left behind, alone, helpless, and desperate, he couldn't help feeling sorry for her.

"Call me softhearted."

Ruidio sighed and, mid-leap, planted his foot hard against the trunk of a tree ahead.

The trunk bent under his foot, then boing~~, it bounced him back the way he had come.

Tear tracks still wet on her face, Robin stared in the direction her mother had disappeared.

Her bare feet, which she had run on all the way, were covered in bloody marks. Two of her toenails had been torn off, and the skin on her slender legs had been scraped away in many places, leaving them bloody...

She stood there in a daze, her gaze vacant.

Suddenly, the ghostly figure who had abducted her mother returned. Before she could react, he scooped her up, then swiftly turned around again and continued racing toward the north of the island without looking back.

"..." Robin was tucked under his arm, bouncing up and down in a daze. She leaned out to look at her mother, still unconscious under his other arm, then looked up at the strange man deftly dodging the cannonballs falling from the sky.

Ruidio raced onward and soon burst out of the northern woods, where he saw the north coastline ahead. Two enormous warships lay on the sea not far away, firing a dense barrage into the island. The smoke from their cannons almost formed a continuous cloud.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang...

On the deck of one of the giant warships, where smoke and fire flashed in rows, an even more dazzling point of golden light suddenly appeared.

In the blink of an eye, the golden light was above Ruidio's head.

"How scary. I almost missed you..." The golden light condensed into a human figure, who spoke in a flippant tone. "Sorry, but aside from those who boarded the Evacuation Ship, we can't let a single person go."

Robin shrank fearfully into Ruidio's arms.

Ready to activate the system's return function at any moment, Ruidio said calmly, "We have important information that the Celestial Dragons would want to know. By rights, a Marine of your rank isn't qualified to decide what to do with us."

He looked up at Kizaru, who was still only a Vice Admiral at this point.

"..."

The light beam Kizaru was charging at his fingertip, aimed at Ruidio's head, gradually faded.

"Oh~~ is that so? How scary." Kizaru spoke in the same unserious tone. "Information even the Celestial Dragons would want to know?"

Ruidio said, "Figarland Shamrock has a long-lost twin brother. This woman I'm holding was a scholar who traveled overseas. She has important information about it."

Ruidio didn't remember the Sea Circle Calendar very well, but Red-Haired Shanks's timeline was easy to work out.

Fourteen years before "two years after" Luffy set sail, the Giant King had been hammered to death by his son Loki, and Red-Hair had been there.

At the time, it was about a year before Red-Hair returned to Mary Geoise and became "Saint Figarland Shanks." His left eye had been bandaged, so Blackbeard had clearly scratched him not long before.

It could be inferred that his fight with Blackbeard had caused some kind of stir, bringing Red-Hair to the attention of his biological father, the commander of the Holy Knights. Blackbeard had still been keeping a low profile and didn't want to become famous, but Shanks had been welcomed back to the Holy Land as a result.

Before that, Red-Haired Shanks had probably just been an obscure young pirate, lost because of his origins, who only wanted to get by on the seas with a group of pirate companions, drifting along through pain and happiness...

In any case, Shanks had been forced back to Mary Geoise to become a Celestial Dragon lord about seven years after Ohara's destruction.

And now, seven years before that, even Shanks's biological father couldn't find him, so Kizaru was even less likely to know whether it was true or false.

Although traces of the Celestial Dragon surname "Figarland" could be found in industries all over the world, "Figarland Shamrock" was not a name just anyone would know...

Sure enough, the golden beam at Kizaru's fingertip went out completely.

"You're right~~"

The Marine Headquarters Vice Admiral said, "This really is something only an 'Admiral' is qualified to handle. The three of you will have to come back to Headquarters with me."

Whew...

Ruidio breathed an inward sigh of relief.

If he'd gotten it wrong again, he really would have been angry! If pushed too far, he'd just give Olvia a black headband and make her a Muscle Tyrant, then go straight to Kalifa's father to learn Geppo of the Six Powers and escape Ohara, kicking through the air like a skyrocket...

...Though in the end, Kizaru might still catch up to them in the form of light.

Feeling relaxed as he thought this, Ruidio tucked Robin and the slowly awakening Olvia under his arms and followed Kizaru aboard the enormous warship.

"Sorry, but you have to wear these." Kizaru's adjutant waved a hand.

Three Marines immediately stepped forward, each carrying a pair of handcuffs, and fastened them on Ruidio, Olvia, and Robin with three clicks.

Ruidio didn't mind. He felt the material of the handcuffs and, oh, they were even made of Seastone.

Beside him, Robin, being a Devil Fruit User, slumped weakly to the deck and leaned limply against her mother's shoulder.

The warship was still firing nonstop. A dense curtain of cannonballs flew toward the island ahead, which had already become a hellscape. In the distance, the Tree of Knowledge collapsed amid the raging flames...

Olvia watched it all in silence. She didn't know what had happened and could only instinctively comfort her weak and frightened daughter in a low voice.

At the bow of the warship, the adjutant asked Kizaru in a low voice, "Vice Admiral Borsalino, Nico Olvia is a fugitive from the government. It's very possible she only wanted to save her own life and recklessly urged that boy to lie..."

Kizaru clicked away with a pair of nail clippers and said casually, "That's not my concern~~ Since it involves the Celestial Dragons, let's leave it to Admiral Sengoku and the others. I'm only following the rules anyway~~"

All he had wanted at first was a respectable job he could do with a clear conscience. Did those people at the top really think he enjoyed firing on an island of civilian scholars and massacring them indiscriminately, just to "kill the chicken to warn the monkeys"?

In any case, they couldn't fault him for doing this. He'd leave it at that.

The Buster Call's cannon fire thundered all night.

In the darkness, Robin curled up on the deck, her face buried in her mother's arms as she cried softly. Olvia gently patted her trembling, slender shoulders.

Robin wiped away her tears and turned to look at the strange man who had brought her and her mother here. In the next instant, everything seemed to stop.

["Why did Mom die that day?" mission completed]

[Mission rewards: 268,787 Essence; Satoru Gojo Transformation x1; Synthesis Blueprint x1]

It's finally done!!!

More than 260,000 Essence! Yes!!!

The instant the system notification appeared, the system simultaneously transported Ruidio back to Alabasta's royal palace as it had been a few hours earlier, to a corner of a corridor in the Royal Family Grand Library.

Wait, what transformation???

Before Ruidio could examine the strange mission reward, he abruptly looked up and saw Robin rubbing her temple, leaning lightly against the wall and staring at him in a daze. "Figarland...?" she asked.

Chapter 39: Nico Robin, I've already reserved you

Although Ruidio's final mission to Ohara had lasted an entire night, in reality, the time in Alabasta was no different from when he had left. Evening had passed and the sky was growing dim, but it wasn't dark yet.

Now he could be certain that no matter how long he spent in a special mission like that, he would appear out of thin air three seconds after he left when he returned.

"Figarland?"

Ruidio studied Robin and asked with interest, "What do you mean?"

He raised a hand slightly, and there was a light clink. It was the Seastone Handcuffs he had been given aboard Kizaru's warship.

"..."

Robin stared fixedly at his handcuffs, frowning deeply as though trying hard to remember.