"Now let's return to our sheep..." The young man turned once again to the temporarily forgotten Robin. "We have only two questions for you!" He held up his fingers in a victory 'V.' "Where can we find your Big Boss's money, and why did you reveal his identity to the princess?"
"..."
"You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but then I'll put the sixth bullet back," Luffy said, not disappointed by the girl's silence in the least. "Do I need to explain your chances of surviving our little game with all six chambers loaded, or can you work that out yourself?"
"...Sir Crocodile keeps all available funds in his casino in Rainbase, and I allowed the princess to discover his identity because I wanted to observe her reaction and subsequent actions."
"Only for that?" Luffy raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That's all? No other motive? No grand plan? No desire to frame him? No attempt to get rid of your Big Boss and take his place?" he listed the most obvious possibilities.
"An underage princess and an elderly captain of the royal guard infiltrated an underground organization together with their fast-running duck and are doing everything in their power to save their country by diligently hastening its destruction," the girl answered coldly.
"Sounds like the beginning of some kind of joke," Johnny admitted.
"Not a particularly funny joke," Nami added.
"Why not?" Luffy disagreed. "In my opinion, the setup alone sounds so absurd that I'm almost laughing already." The young man truly began smiling after Robin's answer. "Especially the part about the duck."
Mr. Eight's head, left on the crate-table, tried to sink into its temporarily nonexistent neck.
"And how did you learn about the princess in the first place?" Luffy asked. "Did you catch them when they began following you?"
"I always knew about the princess."
That answer surprised everyone present once again.
"Always?" the young man repeated. "Did you personally know, or did your Big Boss know too?"
"When the heir to the throne and the captain of the royal guard disappear from sight at the same time, such a disappearance cannot remain unnoticed for long. Sir Crocodile anticipated their reasoning and immediately organized a search within the organization. It took him only a few days to determine their location."
Igaram could no longer remain silent after such a revelation.
"You're saying he knew from the beginning that we were trying to uncover his identity?!" the man's head shouted from its place. "Impossible! You're lying! If he knew, why did he wait so long before taking action? If he knew we were inside his organization, he could have disposed of us long ago! Why didn't he?"
"Usopp." Luffy tilted his head slightly toward the long-nosed young man.
He did not need to ask twice, and soon Igaram's head was placed before Robin.
"He did not eliminate you for the simple reason that you were always under his observation, your actions did not interfere with him, and you worked exceptionally well," Robin said. There was no open gloating in her voice, but something of the sort slipped through all the same. "Mr. Eight, since you took charge of Whisky Peak, you have increased the town's income fourfold. You received this post only because you had earned a reputation as an excellent administrator back in Alabasta. Sir Crocodile considered it unreasonable to eliminate such a competent man while he was working so diligently to help him achieve his objective."
Morally, Igaram was utterly destroyed by the girl's brief speech.
"O-o-o-oh!" the insane family chorused, then applauded just as unanimously.
"Looks like Crocodile isn't a complete idiot after all, and he may actually be capable of causing trouble," an amused Zoro shared his opinion. "Now the main thing is that having brains doesn't turn out to be his only virtue."
After two and a half years devoted entirely to training, the green-haired swordsman had begun literally dreaming of meeting a powerful opponent. Even before meeting Luffy, he had earned fame as the strongest swordsman in East Blue. After all the training, awakening two kinds of Haki, and subsequently mastering them, Zoro had lost any understanding of the limits of his own strength. The destruction of Don Krieg's pirate armada provided a good example. Before they entered the fight, the young man had not doubted their victory for even a moment. But that confidence had not come from his own level of strength; it came from Luffy's presence. Only after the armada's complete destruction did Zoro realize that he could easily have dealt with all the pirates alone. Without any particular difficulty. It would have been like a training exercise involving several thousand sword swings. The young man had long since ceased to understand how powerful he truly was. Luffy served as his only point of reference, yet he too stood at a level Zoro could not comprehend. Meeting Law only worsened the situation. The strongest pirate of North Blue was someone the young man could kill with a single attack. For those reasons, Zoro placed great hopes in Crocodile. His logic was simple: if the World's Strongest Swordsman belonged among the Warlords, then weaklings could not be admitted to their ranks! Therefore, fighting a current Warlord should help him determine his present level of strength. At least, Zoro sincerely hoped so.
"All right, you can consider one bullet earned," Luffy delivered his verdict once everyone had more or less calmed down. "Now it's your turn to tell us something interesting."
"..."
"Hey! Why are you silent? No one has ever survived with five bullets in the cylinder!"
Robin sat with her back against the dead Banchi's head. She still held her broken arm carefully against her chest, while her other hand nervously gripped the revolver with one cartridge in its cylinder. Four more cartridges lay on the ground beside her. During Luffy and Law's conversation, she could have attempted something, but the girl discarded the thought almost as soon as it arose. What use were five bullets? A revolver with an infinite supply of ammunition could not have changed her present circumstances. Robin saw only one path to salvation—the very path the Monster had indicated.
"...What am I supposed to tell you?"
"How should I know? The important thing is that it interests us!"
Robin thought. She had an approximate idea of what she should say, but the price did not satisfy her. One interesting fact for one bullet? Five interesting secrets in succession? She did not possess that many! For that reason, the girl decided to place all her trump cards on the table at once. Robin reasoned as follows: if a weapon of mass destruction had interested one of the world's infamous Warlords, there was no reason it could not interest the Monster standing before her. The power to erase entire towns and islands from the face of the world with a single attack—what pirate would voluntarily reject such strength?
"I can tell you why Sir Crocodile made me his right hand," Robin offered.
"...Is that interesting?" Luffy doubted.
"That isn't for me to decide."
"Fine, tell us!"
"He made me his right hand because of my knowledge of the Poneglyphs."
The unfamiliar word puzzled everyone present, but as almost always happened in such situations, Johnny's tongue proved faster than everyone else's.
"Pony-what-glyphs? What are those supposed to be?! And why do you know about them?"
At times it seemed that every cell in the young man's body suffered from excessive curiosity. Thus, while Johnny's brain was only beginning to formulate the correct question, his tongue was already investigating to its heart's content, firing a whole barrage of questions in partnership with his lips.
"Poneglyphs are indestructible blocks made from an unknown material. Recorded on the Poneglyphs are the history of our world and the locations of three Ancient Weapons of mass destruction — Pluton, Poseidon, and Uranus. Sir Crocodile made me his right hand so that, by deciphering the Poneglyph hidden in Alabasta, I could help him find one of the Ancient Weapons."
"Something that incredible is truly hidden in Alabasta?!!" For yet another time in a very short period, Igaram was shaken to the depths of his soul.
The man had never heard of any Poneglyphs or Ancient Weapons, and he certainly had not expected something of that kind to be concealed within the country to which he had devoted his entire life.
"Most likely, only the current king of Alabasta knows the Poneglyph's location," Robin answered.
"There's something I don't understand. If Poneglyphs serve as guides to the locations of three powerful weapons at once, why hasn't the World Government found them yet?" Law asked logically.
"I agree," Nami nodded. "The Five Elders are unlikely to dream of the day some pirate gets their hands on one of the Ancient Weapons and begins a full-scale war against them."
"Especially if the weapon falls into the revolutionaries' hands," Sanji added. "They've already been waging a full-scale war against the World Government for a long time, so they would certainly find a use for an Ancient Weapon."
"There is a period in our world's history that every historian calls the 'Lost Century' or the 'Void Century,'" Robin began explaining after adjusting her position slightly. "The period begins nine hundred years ago and continues for the following hundred years, which is why it received those names. Every record from that time was destroyed. No information remains about the events of those years. Searching for and studying Poneglyphs is the only way to learn the True History of that era, but the World Government punishes their decipherment without trial or investigation, destroying entire islands and cities along with every inhabitant. You asked how I know about Poneglyphs?" Robin looked at Johnny. "I was eight years old when I passed my examination and became a fully qualified archaeologist. My island was famous for the world's most outstanding scholars and archaeologists. Such people could not possibly ignore the Poneglyphs. They created a secret society dedicated to searching for and deciphering every Poneglyph in existence. I spied on their meetings using my fruit's power, and that was how I learned to read the ancient language. It ended with my entire island being destroyed, every one of its inhabitants killed, and a bounty of seventy-nine million berries placed on my head. World Government agents learned that I had escaped the island and could decipher Poneglyphs, so they invented a story about a little monster capable of destroying eight Marine battleships at once, together with every crew aboard. That is how I became one of the most wanted people in the world despite my relatively small bounty. It is possible that I am the only person left anywhere in the world who can still decipher Poneglyphs. Sir Crocodile could not possibly proceed without my help."
Robin did not believe in luck—with a life like hers, how could she?—and so, as already mentioned, she had decided to place every one of her trump cards on the table at once. The possibility of finding an Ancient Weapon, the only person capable of locating it, and a wanted poster serving as one piece of evidence. For the first time in her life, the poster proved useful rather than bringing a fresh portion of trouble. She had dumped all her secrets at once upon the pirates surrounding her, and now she hoped it would be enough. Otherwise, she was finished. The girl did not believe she could survive the deadly game with one cartridge in the cylinder, much less two, three, or—God forbid—four. Five did not even bear mentioning. Even a person blessed with lifelong good fortune would have almost no hope under such circumstances.
"The World Government destroyed your entire island, along with every inhabitant, simply because the scholars and archaeologists living there tried to learn what happened during the 'Lost Century'?" a somewhat stunned Nami asked.
She had long since stopped believing in the infallibility of the Marines or the World Government, but surely not to this extent! This was not some single corrupt Marine captain with his personal pack of jackals dressed in soldiers' uniforms. This was on an entirely different level!
"That is clearly excessive, of course, but at the same time there was no guarantee that someone else would not someday make use of their work," Sanji attempted to find at least some justification for the World Government's actions.
"The records of their translations could have been stolen and used to locate one of the Ancient Weapons—or all three," Usopp supported the blond man.
None of the young men viewed life through rose-colored glasses, but they found it difficult to believe that the people leading the World Government could so casually commit outright genocide merely because someone studied history. Otherwise, even pirates would begin to look like perfectly respectable people by comparison.
"It isn't about the Ancient Weapons." Robin shook her head. "The Ancient Weapons are merely a convenient pretext for the prohibitions and for justifying mass murder. What the Government truly fears is that someone might one day discover the True History."
"The True History?" Law raised an eyebrow.
"Something happened in our world nine hundred years ago. Something so extraordinary that humanity was thrown far backward in its development. And it was at that exact time that the organization now known as the World Government appeared. Draw your own conclusions; I have no proof. I have devoted the last twenty years of my life to searching for the Rio Poneglyph, but I have not succeeded. The Poneglyph in Alabasta is my final chance."
"What's the Rio Poneglyph supposed to be?" Johnny asked.
"The most mysterious Poneglyph of all—the key to the events of the 'Void Century.' The True History of our world should be recorded upon it."
"And you've been searching for it for twenty years?" Nami frowned.
"Every person dear to me died in pursuit of the True History. The least I can do is learn the truth. Learn what they gave their lives for," Robin explained calmly.
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