Nico Robin

In a narrow, cramped room, Robin huddled in a corner with her back against the cold wall and let out a soft sigh.

More than a week ago, driven to a dead end by a pack of bounty hunters, she had hijacked a small fishing boat and drifted recklessly to this island.

She had originally assumed that the forces entrenched here were just some third-rate minor gang, and with the power of the Flower-Flower Fruit, she could hide for ten days and a half, then leave once the heat died down.

Yet fate seemed to play a cruel joke on her, as the rulers here were one of the five major bosses of the West Blue—though that title carried plenty of water, these five men still checked the bounty posters on time and informed their subordinates of the relevant info so their underlings wouldn't draw enemies they couldn't afford to provoke.

A tide of subordinates surged in wave after wave, her stamina exhausted in endless resistance, and she ended up locked in here.

It's fine.

Robin clenched her small fists, her gaze unusually firm.

"If they want to hand me over to the World Government, they have to escort me out eventually. As long as I get past this door, I'll have a chance to escape."

Two years of running and hiding had long since forged this girl to be calmer than many adults, and her mind was even more mature than some grown-ups with little exposure to society.

Clang!

The iron door was suddenly yanked open from the outside. Dust danced across the air, and two backlit figures stood in the doorway, blocking out all light so their faces were invisible, leaving only a heavy sense of oppression washing over her.

Robin jerked her head up, her hands instantly crossing in front of her chest.

The Paramecia-class Flower-Flower Fruit, capable of "sprouting" on any object within her line of sight, was an exceptional power for sneak attacks.

On Lucas's and Baccarat's shoulders, two pairs of fair, slender arms sprouted respectively.

The arms crossed, violently choking both their necks from left to right with a ruthless and decisive motion.

Lucas raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised. As expected of people from the protagonist group, even the passive bad luck of the Lucky-Lucky Fruit could be bypassed.

If anyone else attacked Baccarat, at best they would break a leg, and at worst they would drop dead on the spot—this was the inevitable backlash.

A halo was truly an unreasonable thing.

Lucas let those two arms choke his neck. Robin tried with all her might, yet only felt as though she were trying to strangle an iron-cast mountain that refused to budge an inch.

Lucas tilted his head slightly, his fingertips tapping the arms on Baccarat's shoulders. The two arms instantly shattered into a sky full of petals.

"Ngh..." Robin let out a muffled grunt, her petite figure stumbling back a step as a trace of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth.

The limbs grown by the Flower-Flower Fruit shared the senses of the main body, and the pain of being shattered was transmitted directly back to her.

Before she could react further, intangible Conqueror's Haki burst from Lucas's body like a tsunami, precisely sweeping over her alone.

Robin only felt as though her head had been heavily struck by a sledgehammer, the world spinning. The light in front of her quickly faded, and before she could even let out a gasp, her body went limp, and she plunged completely into unconsciousness.

"What use could a little brat like this be?"

Baccarat watched Lucas lift Robin by the back of her collar with one hand and curled her lip.

"Scrawny and not even grown yet."

"My Life Energy can mature her."

"Only the process of accelerated growth will be very painful, and ordinary people can't take it—they'll most likely die from the agony. She... might not."

Baccarat uttered a depressed "Oh" and followed behind.

By evening, Robin snapped her eyes open, scanning her surroundings with vigilance. Outside the porthole was deep dusk and the endless sea.

She was... on a ship?

Countless thoughts rushed into her mind.

"Are they going to sell me to human traffickers? Or hand me over to the Marines for the bounty?"

"My power is useless against them, and I can't beat them anyway. How am I supposed to escape?"

She sat on the bed hugging her knees, her brain spinning rapidly for countermeasures. It wasn't until the cabin door was pushed open and footsteps sounded that she instantly raised her head, striking a defensive pose once more with her hands crossed in front of her chest.

"Nico Robin."

Lucas walked in, pulled up a chair, and sat down opposite her.

"Relax, I won't hurt you."

"Why should I trust you?"

"People like you either just want my bounty, or... something else."

"Because you and I are both people the World Government has no room for."

"Do you know about the Batto Batto no Mi, Model: Vampire?"

Robin froze, then nodded.

"It's recorded in the Tree of Knowledge's Devil Fruit encyclopedia. It's said... to grant near-endless lifespan."

"Good, you know."

"Then do you know? The Gorosei aren't the highest authority of the World Government. Above them is someone who has already lived for eight hundred years."

"Do you think he'd allow a second person with the potential for eternal life to live in this world?"

To put it without exaggeration, as long as he was willing, and as long as there were enough "prey," he could gain a near-infinite lifespan.

He didn't know what kind of attitude Imu would hold toward someone like himself who also possessed the potential for eternal life.

Put yourself in his shoes.

If you were the god of this world and had ruled it alone for eight hundred years.

Would you tolerate the existence of another fellow being who might live forever just like you?

The answer was self-evident. Unless that person was willing to become your loyal servant, sharing your ruin and your glory alike.

Upon discovering that his lifespan kept increasing, Lucas had mentally prepared himself for the day the World Government would come looking for him.

Robin's eyes widened abruptly, her breathing halting entirely.

Above the Gorosei... was someone else?

Who had lived for eight hundred years?

This information was far too subversive, vastly exceeding her cognition.

If this man wasn't lying, her threat to the World Government truly paled beside his.

Over the past two years, she had witnessed too many gang wars and pirate bloodsheds, where people fought tooth and nail just for control of a tiny island.

Power was always something meant to be monopolized, and a ruler would never tolerate another peer standing on equal footing with themselves.

"You know far more than I do."

"Then why did you capture me? Since you're clear on secrets like this, you shouldn't need me to translate the Poneglyphs. Or could it be... that you want the Ancient Weapons?"

"I already know the whereabouts of the Ancient Weapons."

"What I've set my sights on is you."

Robin's expression altered drastically, subconsciously shrinking back as she tightly covered her chest with her hands, intense disgust and fear flashing in her eyes.

"Don't come over! If you take another step... I'll die right in front of you!"

She actually raised her hand to grip her own neck, her fingertips pressing hard as red marks immediately appeared on her fair skin.

Along her path of flight over the past two years, she had encountered more than a few perverts with foul intentions toward young children.

Those people had all ended up dying by her power.

Better to die uncompromised.

Lucas's mouth twitched violently, a vein throbbing at his temple.

With black lines running down his forehead, he literally didn't know what to say.

The one he liked was the mature Nico Robin from the original timeline, not the little brat in front of him.

"I have no interest in how you look right now."

"However, I can let you grow into an adult in an instant. The process will hurt a lot—whether you can take the hardship is your own choice."

Robin froze, her hand loosening slightly from her throat with a skeptical look.

"Grow up? You aren't going to take advantage of me while you're at it, are you?"

Lucas raised his hand in a wave, and a massive amount of crimson blood Qi oozed from his body, rapidly condensing in midair between the two of them into a gigantic blood-red sphere five meters in diameter.

"Inside this is one year of my lifespan."

"Absorb it, and you'll immediately grow into an adult form. Let me warn you once more: bones, muscles, and internal organs growing explosively all at once will hurt immensely. If you can't hold out, you'll die."

His current life balance had reached three times that of an ordinary giant, so pulling out a single year was utterly painless and inconsequential to him.

By his estimation, one year of lifespan was enough to let Robin grow directly to around twenty years of age.

"Once you've made up your mind, touch it. If you don't want to try, I'll let you go once we make port."

The cabin door closed, leaving only Robin alone in the room with that hovering blood-red sphere of light.

Robin stared at the blood sphere, plunging into a prolonged struggle.

What if he's lying to me? What if I die from absorbing it?

If I really could grow up...

If I became an adult, no one would associate me with the "Child of the Devil" anymore.

She could assume a new identity and walk under the sun with her head held high, no longer needing to run and hide, no longer needing to wake up every single day thinking about how to survive.

Besides... he knew so many secrets. He knew about the person above the Gorosei, and he knew about the Ancient Weapons.

By following him, would she be able to get a step closer to the truth? Would she be able to fulfill the dying wish of her mother and Doctor Clover?

The worst-case scenario was nothing more than death.

If she couldn't even touch the truth of history, what meaning was there in lingering on with such a pathetic existence?

Having been ostracized since childhood, she had never truly had a reason of her own to live.

Before the Buster Call incident, the driving force keeping her alive was the longing for her mother's return and her bonds with the archaeologists.

After the Buster Call incident, she lost her mother and the archaeologists, and that drive transformed into her mother's dying words.

Inheriting her mother's will, seeking the Poneglyphs and uncovering the true history.

For that, she was willing to risk everything.

Robin's gaze shifted from hesitation to gradual determination.

She took a deep breath, climbed down from the bed, and walked step by step toward the blood sphere.

The moment her small hand slowly reached out and her fingertips touched the blood sphere, a vast flood of Life Energy rushed wildly into her body like a breached dike.

"Ah!"

A shrill, miserable scream instantly pierced through the cabin.

Her bones crazily stretched and grew, muscle fibers tore and reassembled, and her internal organs developed to maturity at a terrifying speed.

That excruciating pain seeping from the bone marrow was like countless blades slicing through her body all at once.

With the door tightly shut, the screams passed through the wooden panels, only to be swallowed up by the sea breeze just as quickly.

Inside the cabin, the blood-red glow illuminated the girl's continuously growing figure, her old life shattering amidst the agonizing pain, and a new life sprouting within the crimson light.

TO BE CONTINUED

(PS: Let's briefly touch upon Robin's character design here. The version in Dark wasn't written well; Robin's character design has three versions: pre-Enies Lobby, Enies Lobby to Sabaody Archipelago, and post-time skip.

Robin before Enies Lobby had self-destructive tendencies. Reference materials include how, upon discovering that the poneglyph in Alabasta wasn't historical truth but information on an Ancient Weapon, she felt she could no longer achieve the dreams entrusted to her by Olivia and Clover, wishing to die alongside the collapsing royal tomb.

If Luffy had been single-minded and thrown her away, Robin really would have died right there.

By Water 7, her self-destructive tendencies surfaced again; she genuinely wanted to die, using her life as the price for the Straw Hats' survival—otherwise, those famous scenes wouldn't exist.

I won't elaborate much on her character design after Enies Lobby, as book friends should all be familiar with it.

I reckon Perona's ghosts would most likely be ineffective against pre-Enies Lobby Robin as well. No matter how pessimistic Usopp got, he never thought of committing suicide, whereas Robin actually thought about it and put it into action—once in Alabasta, once in Water 7, and once in the memories of reuniting with Saul in Chapter 1133, where she wanted to jump off a cliff.

In this book, Nami and Robin's romance/conquest arcs will be a tiny bit longer than those of the other heroines, considering these two have the richest settings.

Lastly, regarding the mental maturity issue: in truth, an eight-year-old Robin was already very mature. She didn't even show a surprised expression when she met Saul, and spoke of her experiences being bullied with almost a completely blank face.

Swap that for Nami at the same age... eight or nine times out of ten, she couldn't pull it off.

Without a birth mother at two, resented and physically punished by her aunt, disliked by her aunt's daughter, with her uncle looking on coldly.

Eating a Devil Fruit only to have stones thrown at her by children her own age, isolated by everyone.

An eight-year-old Robin already had six years of bullying experience under her belt, with the bullies even including her own "family." One can only say the Leaf Village still fell a bit short compared to Ohara.

Given this kind of growth environment, it is entirely reasonable for Robin's mind to be this mature.)